Allegiance to this great nation

To borrow from playwright Tennessee Williams, upon reading about the Bonsall protests I was struck by “The Foul Stench of Mendacity.” The pro-day worker elements proudly waved signs saying many day laborers are here legally, but to be truthful many are not. The term “undocumented worker” is at best a misnomer; the accurate term would be “economic refugee.” They flee a country so ripe with corruption and political indifference their only solution to Mexico’s poverty problem is encouraging its poorest citizens to cross the border.

“We are a nation of immigrants.” My own great-grandfather came from Italy. Of the 420 who sailed from Genoa, 20 died from the appalling conditions and over a third were sent back. But Rocco Proia came here, not to be an Italian but to become something better: an American. He and my great-grandmother studied English every night. He insisted his seven children not only speak the language of his adopted country but read and write it too.

He was not welcomed with open arms but spit on, called WOP and beaten up. But as he assimilated, his acceptance grew. Starting with one truck in the early 1930s, he had a thriving trucking business by the late ’40s. He lost one son fighting in WWII and a great-grandson in Vietnam.

Rocco Proia was not an Italian-American. He was an American who believed in the values, freedoms and costs in blood that allegiance to this great nation demands.

Even during the undocumented protests of 2006 they chanted for American rights while waving the flag of another nation. The Minutemen have been much maligned as bullies but it is the pro-undocumented advocates who violently try to disperse Minutemen meetings. Our president has decided national sovereignty is obsolete. Our elected representatives will not do anything to defend our borders or to reimburse state taxpayers who have been strapped with the cost of an additional 30,000,000 people, a number that grows annually. Any sovereign nation must have defended borders and the right to orderly immigration. That is what the Minutemen are all about and I support them.

Mark Notarian