The golden door....

I was talking to a cousin of mine yesterday over how I had gotten some mail delivered. It was a response from the Louisiana Secretary of State, and his office was sending me copies of vital records I requested. My cousin found it very tormenting that her grandmother's great-grandfather was a native of Spain. This cousin thoroughly enjoys the language, culture, and food of Germany [and wants to go visit there]. But French and Spanish ancestry my cousin found mocking; yet German was different. With the immigration battle raging not far away in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona [at least, the front line of it], I told her that FDR was right: save only for the Native Americans, we all come from immigrants. Ours had come legally and gotten naturalization. For New Orleans, they mostly came from France at first, and then Spain; only later Germany and Italy. And Spain tied her policy to France ever since 1700 when Carlos II of Spain chose his French cousin as heir: the royal family of Spain is senior male line to the throne of France. Only the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 bars them from it. In my case, all my Spanish lines are legal, but many of the protests center on their cousins since Mexicans are mostly either Spanish -Indian or pure Indian. [And we're not even counting the ones coming from Central American countries up through Mexico to here...]. So is it any wonder that the cousins of the Natives we European immigrants massacred, interred, and coughed on are coming back? Quel suprise!