My family has also been here 6 generations

by DRM Action Coalition | January 4, 2013

“Oh, and 11 years, really? My family has been here for 6 generations. You’ve been here for 6 minutes. And, as an illegal immigrant, you don’t get to DEMAND anything.” – Conservative Hispanic Journalist

Kevin Solis

Kevin Solis – Los Angeles based immigrant rights advocate

There are several problems with this statement and in the article written by the same conservative Hispanic journalist that inspired the exchange. Aside from its obvious patronage and nativism it’s written by someone who proposed to be an advocate of immigration reform. We’d later find that “immigration reform” for him was couched in tighter border security, stricter enforcement of laws, and denying a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, the latter something that has been consistently favored by the majority of Americans.

But there is another problem with the “my family has been here 6 generations” and using “illegal immigrant” in the same sentence. First, “Illegal immigrant” is rejected by most leading journalistic style guides as inaccurate and defaming; something of design by the conservative Hispanic journalist who wrote an inaccurate and defaming article of DREAMers not coincidently. The proper term for someone in this situation is they are here “without inspection”.

Now let’s look at 6 generation math because that is a game I can also play, and assume our conservative Hispanic journalist wants to claim Hispanic roots. His generation is the first. He would have been born during the era of the moon landing and civil unrest. We accomplished great things as a nation and overcame great injustices. Too young to serve in Vietnam he would none-the-less been influenced by this period of youth empowerment and witness the rise of the Chicano Movement. It was a period of Raza awaking and reclaiming a heritage that influences the youth immigrant movement of today.

Two generations ago his parents would be born during the Great Depression, a period of anti-Mexican hysteria where over 1 million Mexican nationals and U.S. citizens were deported to Mexico. America had a financial crisis caused by the greed of less than 100 wealthy families and sought to scapegoat “the little brown ones”. (Just to remind you, I’m referring to a period 80 years ago, not today.) His parents generation would have served in Korea, the Cold War and be very influenced by U.S./Soviet policies. The world was divided into us vs. them.

Three generations ago his grandparents would be born around the turn of the 20th century and become what one reputable journalist called “the greatest generation.” This generation fought in WWII and five in my own family served including my grandfather. Of the four others, all brothers, the oldest of which took part on D-Day, June 6, 1944, he would be injured on this invasion of Normandy but is still alive today. This generation then returned home and built the nation in grand infrastructure projects and suburb housing.

Four generations ago, great-grandparents time, a post-civil war industrial boom fueled by the steam engine pushed an eager nation westward. Like many immigrants my great-grandfather worked on the Topeka Railroad in Kansas, once the edge of the Western territory.

Five generations ago in great-great-grandparent time they would be born between 1830’s-1850’s and here is where “my family has been here x generations” starts to fall apart. This was a time where the western half of the United States was Mexico. The U.S. would fight a war with Mexico from 1846-1848 prompted by Texas seceding from Mexico a decade earlier and it’s annexation by the U.S. And it was when in 1868 the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted providing for birthright citizenship and equal protection of the laws.
Six generations ago in great-great-great-grandparent time they would be born just after the turn of the 19th century. My own family’s earliest recorded birth of this generation is in 1809. Here’s what happened six generations ago:

  • 1803 Napoleon sells France’s claim of the Louisiana Territory to the United States doubling its size.
  • 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe (Tecumseh’s War) and the U.S. attack on the sovereign American Indian Confederation opened Westward expansion.
  • 1819 Spain cedes Florida to the US.

Five and six generations ago the nation was half the size it is today and the western area including Texas was Spanish territory becoming the independent nation of Mexico in 1821. All this begs the question, how can a modern Hispanic person claim “my family has been here for 6 generations” status when the area was not part of the U.S.? Either you resided in the Western area and were granted “amnesty” during the Treaty of Hidalgo in 1868 which ended the U.S./Mexican war, or your family went to some part of the Eastern U.S. “without inspection” because it wasn’t until 1875 the Supreme Court ruled immigration to be a federal responsibility and the first department of immigration wasn’t created until 1891.

So here is the problem with “my family has been here for 6 generations” and “illegal immigrant” in the same sentence. Six generations ago ancestry existed almost 100 years before any immigration policies, thus you need to acknowledge they arrived “without inspection” and you are therefore the decedent of “illegal immigrants”. If “illegal immigrant” linage bothers you then you need to instead acknowledge that your ancestry benefited from a generous open border policy. There simply was no “right way” to enter the country during this time as no “way” existed even four generations ago. But our conservative Hispanic journalist misses an obvious point when he attempts to disparage the DREAMer generation by claiming “OG” status. Both they and he are beneficiaries of a prior generation who came to this land to make a life for their progeny, something neither they nor he had any control over. And both they and he are more similar in arrival if you acknowledge “without inspection” status.

My name is Kevin Solis. I am a Los Angeles based immigrant rights advocate, a proud ally and activist in the DREAMers movement that seeks sensible immigration reform and a pathway to citizenship for the DREAMers and their parents, and I am a descendent of people indigenous to the Western Hemisphere.