Montini: In praise of what Donald Trump calls 's--hole countries'

EJ Montini: Without them there would be no United States of America.

EJ Montini
The Republic | azcentral.com
President Donald Trump

At one time or another, just about any place from which anyone has emigrated to America has been referred to as what Donald Trump – the sitting president of the United States – referred to as “s--hole countries.”

Reports say that during a meeting with members of Congress concerning immigration the president got upset when there was talk of immigrants from Haiti and African countries, saying, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?"

Trump grew up in New York, but I guess he never got around to reading the inscription on the State of Liberty.

His own ancestors trace their roots to places like Germany and Scotland.

At different times in our past, there were Americans who would have referred to those places using Trump’s crude adjective.

Greatness comes from 's--hole countries'

Contemporary Americans with Haitian family roots include the musician and humanitarian Usher and the basketball star Blake Griffin.

As for Africa, there are too many Americans of importance of African ancestry to name them all.

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Just a few might include Muhammad Ali, Clarence Thomas, Martin Luther King Jr., Willie Mays, Maya Angelou, Jackie Robinson, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver and a man you may not have heard of named William H. Carney. He was the first African American awarded the Medal of Honor in the Civil War.

Pick any nation from which America has drawn immigrants and you will find offspring who go on to do great things.

All of those countries, at one time or another, would been called you-know-what countries.

Although, perhaps, not by the president of the United States.

Without them, there would be no us

Early Americans looked down at the Irish.

But among the Americans with lineage to Ireland are Walt Disney, Christa McAuliffe (the teacher-astronaut killed in 1986 Challenger disaster), Audie Murphy (the most decorated soldier of World War II) and more than 20 presidents, ranging from Andrew Jackson to Ulysses S. Grant to John F. Kennedy.

My family came from Italy, among a wave of immigrants from a country perhaps referred to in scatological terms at one time. But without those immigrants there would have been no Americans like Enrico Fermi (the physicist and Nobel Prize recipient), and no Frank Sinatra, Robert De Niro, the businessman Lee Iacocca or the Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

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And no me.

And – pick a country – no you.

(Unless you are Native American.)

Someone should remind the president – not that it would do any good – that without the world’s “shithole countries” there would be no America.

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