Thread by @VABVOX

The Wife's fam are immigrants.
So tonight we were talking about #JohnKelly.

I am imagining #MothersDay with the fam all together & The Wife's mother, whose parents were a carpenter & a lacemaker who didn't speak English. The Wife's mother is a painter & retired art professor.

#JohnKelly's xenophobia & racism are over-the-top, even for someone in the Trump administration. How can someone who lost a child be so cavalier about children being separated from their mothers? How can he claim immigrants can't assimilate? How do Trump's people talk like this?

#HeyJohnKelly
My father's mother was from Sweden, never went to school past 5th grade. Her husband, my grandfather, never went past 8th. She took in washing, he was a photographer. They were both functionally illiterate.

My father won a scholarship to an Ivy League college.

#HeyJohnKelly My father-in-law was one of the painters of WWII. He was awarded the OBE. His parents were immigrants--from Russia and Poland respectively. They didn't speak English. They opened a hardware store, sent their two sons to college. My FIL's paintings are in museums.

#HeyJohnKelly One of my wife's uncles, an immigrant, served in the Korean War. He was a police officer for 50yrs. As I said, his parents didn't speak English.

There are so many families like our family--people who are the children and grandchildren of immigrants.

#HeyJohnKelly When I was still teaching college writing courses, many of my students were immigrants. From all over. I always was so impressed that they had learned English so well that they could write in it as well as my students for whom English was a first language.

#HeyJohnKelly How many other languages do you speak? I read two other languages well, but my accents aren't great, I'm a slow speaker. I have to hope people will be kind and listen carefully as I fumble with their native language.

#HeyJohnKelly When I taught English as a second language when I was in college, the majority of my students were mothers. They worked nights cleaning office buildings. They were determined to learn English so that they weren't dependent on their children to be their translators.

#HeyJohnKelly My friend Mr. Fong manages the Asian restaurant in my neighborhood. He swam out of Mao's China at 17 to escape. He got to an aunt in Venezuela, made his way here. He speaks four languages. He says his early life was "very, very hard." He's an extraordinary man.

#HeyJohnKelly At the hospital where I often am (I am fighting #cancer), immigrant Filipino ladies bring communion every day, because there aren't enough priests. I've been so grateful to them for their prayers and for the service they do for the Church and for sick people.

#HeyJohnKelly At the hospital where I am being treated, a large teaching hospital, at least half the staff are immigrants--the doctors, nurses, aides, cleaning crew. Not all of them are documented. They all contribute to saving lives, though.

#HeyJohnKelly We have undocumented #lesbian friends who are in hiding. They were at risk of corrective rape and being killed in their countries of origin. We don't want them to be sent back to die. We want them here, safe, to have a free life. You don't recognize their humanity.

#HeyJohnKelly This is just one American's story of her family & the immigrants that made/make it what it is. You made me think about every immigrant in my life, how wonderful they are, how grateful I am for them & how much they contribute to our nation.

More, perhaps, than you.