Kelly doesn't want unskilled immigrants, just like his ancestors

2025-04-28 01:10:13admin

A new day, a new glaring hypocrisy from the Trump administration.

Today's scandal comes from White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly. In a new interview with NPR, Kelly complained that immigrants crossing the border weren't good fits because they "don't have skills" and "don't speak English."

Thanks to the good humans of Twitter, we now know that's apparently true of Kelly's own ancestors, some of whom were unable to read or write English and would be classified as "unskilled."

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Monica Pattangall, who goes by the Twitter handle @Yokumbrook, first made the discovery on Ancestry.com. She shared it with Jennifer Mendelsohn, who included it in her project Resistance Genealogy. (Mendelsohn also recently tracked fellow Tomi Lahren's ancestry, whose been known to make similar nativist statements.)

According to the research, Kelly's great-grandfather, Giuseppe Pedalino, was a wagon driver. His second-wife Concetta was illiterate and took ten years to learn English.

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There's more.

Tweet may have been deleted

The 1930 census shows those great-grandparents living with their daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, one of whom was Kelly's mother.

John DeMarco had been here for 47 years and was not an American citizen ("AL"). Crescenza had been here for 37 years and spoke no English. pic.twitter.com/5Nyfsu48y0
— Jennifer Mendelsohn (@CleverTitleTK) May 11, 2018

The Washington Postnotes that Kelly’s family likely moved to the United States for more opportunities, similar to the immigrants of today.

Kelly is now using his immigration analysis to justify separating immigrant families from one another at the border.

The Trump administration isn't new to glaring amoral bigoted omissions. Still, Kelly's myopia is worth noting, if only to prove the haters in your families wrong.

We've reached out to the White House for comment, and we'll update this post if we hear back.

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