Susana Martinez, New Mexico Governor, Releases Evidence On Her Grandparents' Immigration Status

[alp227]

Source: AP

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez has dug into her family's ancestry and uncovered immigration documents that she says suggest her paternal grandparents followed common practices in coming to the United States from Mexico in the early 1900s, contradicting earlier indications they were undocumented immigrants.

Martinez, a Republican and the nation's only female Hispanic governor, made headlines this year by acknowledging that her grandparents came to the U.S. without immigration documents. But she said her comments were based on what she has since learned were mischaracterizations of census information by the news media.

The governor directed her political organization to undertake the genealogical research after publicity about her immigrant roots and her push to repeal a law allowing undocumented immigrants to get a driver's license.

(...)

The 1930 U.S. census has been cited in published reports as indicating the governor's grandparents were undocumented immigrants. However, the census only records they were not U.S. citizens at the time they were living in El Paso. The census used a code, "AL" to designate they were "aliens," meaning they were not citizens and had not filed papers declaring their intent to become citizens. It does not indicate their immigration status or whether they were living in the United States legally, according to historians and immigration experts.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/14/susana-martinez-new-mexico-governor-undocumented-immigrants_n_1093251.html

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more info here.

[MADem]

1. Why is she even having to defend this shit? Her people have been here longer than many of mine.

You know, I really don't care what her party affiliation is--it's just stupid to go back a eighty to a hundred years and start pointing fingers.

[AverageJoe90]

2. C'mon, Susie, nobody with half a brain gives a shit about your GPs' legal status!!!!!!

[TygrBright]

3. Susana Tejana wants you to look over there at the shiny thing!

While she and her awl bidness pals get on with the work of dismantling the state government and portioning it out to her buds in El Paso.

sourly,
Bright

[duhneece]

6. Her D.A. perspective, her desire to dismantle NM's medical cannabis laws

So much to dislike her policies for.

On the other hand, I like the image & truth revealed in this statement: I didn't cross the border; the border crossed me...when talking with many of my southern NM neighbors and former neighbors when I lived in El Paso.

[provis99]

4. she brags about having an anti-conservative great grandpa?

ok Martinez; live with your cognitive dissonance, if you can.

[Spider Jerusalem]

5. The US had unrestricted immigration up until 1924

so this seems kind of irrelevant (of course one shouldn't be surprised that people are quite ignorant of the state of American immigration law in the first few decades of the 20th century).

[Gormy Cuss]

8. It wasn't entirely unrestricted before then.

Earlier than that a number of laws were enacted to exclude people based on literacy, health, and race or national origin. There was also a law prohibiting anarchists. I can't remember a specific law but at some point the immigrant needed to declare the amount of money they were bringing in too -- $5 was the threshold I've seen on ship manifests.

[No Elephants]

7. Fool.