In 1913, Antonino Alati left southern Italy to find a better life in a country where many people considered him better than trash.
He joined millions of his brothers in the United States, where the media vilified Italians as poor, dirty, violent Catholics who had too many children, refused to associate with them and could never be considered “white.”
Politicians were already working to close the door on them. A congressional report issued two years before Alati's arrival cited southern Italians as evidence that “the new immigrants as a class are less intelligent than the old.” They came to the United States, the report asserted, “with the intention of profiting, in a cheap way, from the superior advantages of the new country and returning to the old country.”
Alati would not let racism win. He immediately sent for his wife and children, including his infant son Salvatore. Alati turned to Alito, Salvatore to Samuel. A generation later, the family had Supreme Court justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. – the second Italian American, after Antonin Scalia, to sit on the highest court in the country.
During his 2005 confirmation hearing, Alito praised his father as “an extraordinary man who came to the United States as a young child and overcame many difficulties” to ensure a better life for him and his sister. By then, Italian Americans had established themselves as an integral part of the fabric of this country, from music to politics to food.
It's a lot of American mythology — which is why it's surprising, however, to read Alito's heartbreaking denial of the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision rejecting President Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship.
If there is one constant in this country besides death and taxes, it is that the descendants of immigrants, and sometimes the immigrants themselves, forget how much their race was hated and how they proved the haters wrong. There are too many who don't like the policies that helped them and the immigrants that followed.
But Alito's stance against birthright citizenship goes beyond forgetting his roots. His 39-page opinion describes the perceived impact of undocumented immigrants in the US, using words — “exceed,” “rise,” “explode,” “grandfather,” “stream,” “great” — that read the same way Italians were used in his grandfather's and father's time.
Justice passes the anti-Italian conspiracy of the past by casting doubt on the national loyalty of the US-born children of Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants — the same test of patriotism that Italian Americans faced generations ago when immigrants questioned their Catholicism. Alito says without evidence that millions of agricultural workers were able to apply for US citizenship after President Reagan's 1986 amnesty “at least in part because of fraud” – a charge that Italians who wanted to naturalize later in the day made.
That's right, each episode is a frenetic argument dressed up in judicial interpretations that have been largely rejected by Catholic Supreme Court justices John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. Coney Barrett signed on to the majority opinion authored by Roberts, and Kavanaugh concurred.
The Rev. William Barber II speaks at a rally outside the US Supreme Court on April 1 while the justices heard oral arguments on birthright citizenship.
(Al Drago/Getty Images)
I know that families are quick to forget their immigrant history. Yet I look at people like Alito and I wonder how they end up thinking the way they do, because I never thought of doing the same.
My maternal grandmother was born in Arizona to parents who fled their country during the Mexican Revolution, becoming US citizens by birthright. My father, who crossed the border in the trunk of a Chevy, validated his status in an era when it was much easier to do so.
Like Alito paisanesmy Mexican family was also demonized because they did not deserve to be American and posed a threat to the unity of the nation. They also sacrificed their dreams so that their children and grandchildren could achieve theirs.
And like Alito, some members of my family have forgotten our history and supported Trump or favored some of his immigration policies, dismissing immigrants as criminals or lazy. That is why I will always side with undocumented people and welcome anyone who is born in this country in the hope that the newborns get a better life.
It seems from his rebuttal that Alito agrees with me to some extent. He asserts that millions of Americans born in this country to undocumented parents “have a strong belief that they can't stay in the country they grew up in.” Congress “can and should address their situation,” he writes.
Justice promotes birth tourism, where women from China and other countries travel to the US to have a baby, then return home, benefiting from our generosity and giving nothing in return.
I agree that is a mockery of what being an American should be and it destroys people who want to contribute to building a better nation. But Alito is throwing the baby out with the bathwater by failing to recognize that Trump's attempt to revoke birthright citizenship through an executive order is a presidential overreach based on prejudice, not law. It's better if he cuts the Constitution and does something he doesn't like. Thank God his side failed, but it's sad that Trump's pathetic attempt to define who can be an American has gotten as far as it has.
Alito concluded that the court's decision to uphold the 14th amendment was “a mistake that will have a profound effect on the future of the country.”
What immigrants can do to this country is the constant worry of anti-immigrants – and yet history keeps proving them wrong. Alito's family did; so do I. It is only in the United States that the descendants of people once portrayed as parasites and invaders join hands with those who make the same argument about the latest batch of newcomers.
History will see Alito's vote for what it is: abandoning a promise his family once made, supporting people they never wanted here in the first place.
