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09-08-2011, 07:15 PM #1
NM Gov. Martinez says grandparents came to US illegally
New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez says grandparents came to US illegally
El Paso Times
RUSSELL CONTRERAS / Associated Press
Posted: 09/08/2011 02:59:29 PM MDT
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, who has drawn national attention and criticism from immigrant advocacy groups for trying to stop illegal immigrants from getting driver's licenses, has acknowledged her paternal grandparents came to the U.S. illegally.
"I know they arrived without documents, especially my father's father," the Republican said Wednesday in an interview in Spanish with KLUZ-TV, the Albuquerque Univision affiliate.
Reports about Martinez's grandfather coming across the border from Mexico illegally have surfaced numerous times over the past few years. The governor's office has largely avoided attempts to confirm those reports, saying Martinez was unsure of his status since he abandoned the family when her father was young.
Her comments Wednesday appeared to be the first time she has answered the question definitively.
Martinez spokesman Scott Darnell neither confirmed nor denied the report Thursday but said past media reports citing U.S. Census data from 1930 showed Martinez's grandparents entered the country illegally.
"The governor has no information to the contrary," Darnell said in an email. "Neither the governor, nor her father, had a relationship with her grandfather. She never met him and didn't know him. He abandoned her father when her father was about five years old, leaving her father to be raised by extended family."
Martinez has made headlines recently for her push to repeal a state law that lets illegal immigrants get a New Mexico driver's license. She has added the issue to the agenda for a special session on redistricting that opened Tuesday.
New Mexico is one of only three states - the others are Washington and Utah - where an illegal immigrant can get a driver's license because no proof of citizenship is required.
Martinez argues New Mexico's law jeopardizes public safety and attracts illegal immigrants who fraudulently claim to live in the state only to get ID cards that make it easier to stay in the country. Immigrant advocates, however, say the law allows more drivers to be insured in the state and helps law enforcement obtain needed safety data. They say the fraud cases Martinez often cites for reasons to change the law are isolated.
A similar repeal effort by Martinez failed in the state Senate during the regular session earlier this year. Martinez said she wanted legislators to take up the repeal again, despite some lawmakers' complaints that they should focus largely on redistricting.
It's unclear if lawmakers will have time to reconsider the repeal during the 30-day special session. But that hasn't stopped immigrant advocates from coming to Santa Fe to rally against the possible repeal.
In protests this week in Santa Fe, advocates and some religious leaders cited Martinez's family history as a reason the governor should drop her effort to repeal the driver's license law. Advocates said they planned to have posters of New Mexico driver's licenses with Martinez's picture during a rally Thursday outside the Capitol.
Martinez grew up in El Paso and is the nation's first elected Latina governor. She has called the issue of her family's immigrant past irrelevant, arguing immigration laws were different when her grandfather came from Mexico in the 1920s.
But Guadalupe San Miguel Jr., an author and University of Houston history professor, said immigration laws during the time Martinez says her grandparents came to the United States weren't much different than they are now. Those coming to the U.S. were subjected to a number of requirements if they wanted to stay legally, he said.
"What was different then was the lack of enforcement," San Miguel said. "The border patrol was created in 1917, and there were just a handful of border patrol agents. There was no way they could enforce the law."
San Miguel said because of the lack of enforcement Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans went back of forth between Mexico and the United States with little problems.
Lisa Y. Ramos, a Texas A&M University history professor, said most multigenerational Mexican Americans like Martinez have "at least one family member with an undocumented past" due to that free range of movement along the border in early part of the 20th century.
"But Mexican Americans weren't the only ones who have this undocumented past," said Ramos, who is writing a book on the Mexican-American civil rights movement. "A lot of other multigenerational Americans do, too, like Italian Americans."
In fact, then-Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., acknowledged in 2007 during a debate over a failed immigration bill that his mother was an illegal immigrant from Italy and was briefly detained by federal agents during World War II when he was a child. She eventually became a U.S. citizen.
But Ramos said the irony about Martinez's past is that she might not be governor of New Mexico today if her grandparents hadn't made the decision to enter the U.S. the way they did, when they did.
"She wouldn't be there if her grandfather, who was undocumented, hadn't come," Ramos said.
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09-08-2011, 07:17 PM #2
RELATED
Susana Martinez: I Reject Rick Perry's DREAM Act
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-249441-martinez.htmlJoin our FIGHT AGAINST illegal immigration & to secure US borders by joining our E-mail Alerts at http://eepurl.com/cktGTn
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09-08-2011, 08:16 PM #3
SO WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!
She has assimilated to the fullest. A real patriot !
Even Ted Nugent approves of her.You cannot dedicate yourself to America unless you become in every
respect and with every purpose of your will thoroughly Americans. You
cannot become thoroughly Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. President Woodrow Wilson
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09-08-2011, 08:41 PM #4But Ramos said the irony about Martinez's past is that she might not be governor of New Mexico today if her grandparents hadn't made the decision to enter the U.S. the way they did, when they did.
"She wouldn't be there if her grandfather, who was undocumented, hadn't come," Ramos said.
The laws were different in her grandparents time and there are no guarantees that future generations will stay in the same place or do the same things, is there?
Here's another way to look at it. The reason people leave their countries of birth is because there is nothing there for them. They come to the US, where there are opportunities galore and they live the "good" life. Why in God's name do they continue to be loyal their birth countries, which have done nothing for them??
You need to thank the country that gave you the opportunities you have today, not the country that dissed you! Your loyalty should be to the country that accepted you. Only illegal aliens still harbor absurd loyalties to the one who kicked them out.Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)
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09-08-2011, 11:09 PM #5
Governor Martinez mental image of illegals is likely to have been influenced negatively by having had one for a grandfather.
Child support payments I do not need to pay no stinking child support payments.
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09-08-2011, 11:32 PM #6Originally Posted by AmericanTreeFarmerYou cannot dedicate yourself to America unless you become in every
respect and with every purpose of your will thoroughly Americans. You
cannot become thoroughly Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. President Woodrow Wilson
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09-08-2011, 11:53 PM #7
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But Ramos said the irony about Martinez's past is that she might not be governor of New Mexico today if her grandparents hadn't made the decision to enter the U.S. the way they did, when they did.
"She wouldn't be there if her grandfather, who was undocumented, hadn't come," Ramos said.
It must be difficult to be a patriotic Hispanic American when you have to contend with La Raza radicals like Ramos, (and many others) criticizing you for not siding with illegal invaders and disregarding the rule of law because of your shared ethnicity.Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)
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09-09-2011, 12:08 PM #8
The Same Media that Refuses to Look Into Obama’s Past Digs
The Same Media that Refuses to Look Into Obama’s Past Digs Deep in Susana Martinez’s Family History
pajamasmedia.com
by Bryan Preston
Posted at 6:30 am on September 9th, 2011
The Same Media that Refuses to Look Into Obama’s Past Digs Deep in Susana Martinez’s Family History
That should be the real headline of this story, the gist of which is this: It turns out that New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez’s grandparents were illegal aliens from Mexico. Big whoop.
Martinez, a native Texan and conservative Republican who became America’s first female Hispanic governor in the 2010 GOP sweep, has been working to overturn a New Mexico law that allows illegal aliens to get state drivers licenses. Martinez is right on the policy here, but rather than meet her on the merits, her critics have taken to accusing her of being a turncoat or some such. The media in NM has been looking generations into her family’s past, and has determined that her grandparents were indeed illegal aliens.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reported in July that the 1930 U.S. Census Bureaurecord lists Martinez’s paternal grandparents’ citizenship status as “ALâ€Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)
Update: Freeloading Illegal Alien Continues to Taunt U.S....
03-28-2024, 01:10 PM in illegal immigration News Stories & Reports