8/2/2019 My Shady Family History

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My shady family history: (Had I known we’d be in this building, which is wired and has rooms

accessible only by retinal scans, I would have picked a different story. So, just in case, we’re sitting by

the door.)

A year or two ago the airwaves were rife with accusations leveled against the so-called “anchor

babies”—those children born to illegal immigrants who, having been born in the US were

automatically conferred citizenship and therefore taking resources and jobs from “real Americans.”

While the 14th

 Amendment automatically confers citizenship on those born here, a segment of “realAmerica” called for an adjustment to this law that would allow for the deportation of these children,

and probably the children of those children (for good measure.)

I’m here tonight to ask that you NOT deport my parents.

So, here’s the story of my criminal grandparents: 

On my father’s side, his father (a Zluchowski from Galicia, Poland; ironic since I teach Spanish and

there’s a Galicia in Spain) came to the US “SOMEHOW” through Canada. Who he travelled with, if 

anyone, is unknown. How he got into the US is also unknown. There are still Zluchowskis in Canada,

according to Ancestry.com. The rest are in Wilkes-Barre, PA. There don’t seem to be any left inPoland, or at least not according to my cousin who went to medical school over there and looked

around for them. I guess if Dad gets deported he can change the last name back and start a new colony

of Zluchowskis.

His mother’s arrival in the US from Poland at least seems legal—I’ve seen her passport photo—

although still somewhat sketchy, if not downright unethical. She travelled with her sisters and was

separated from them on Ellis Island, never to see or hear from them again. She began to work in

someone’s house as a form of indentured servant, something she never talked about. We can’t trace

her side of the family because we don’t know her maiden name—on the birth certificates of my father

and his brothers and sisters, there are 5 different maiden names given. If Dad is deported, he wouldn’t 

have the slightest idea of where to start looking for kin.

My mother’s side contains the true and legitimate criminal—her father. While her mother’s father was

a criminal in Russia, a draft dodger who left to escape service from the Czar’s army, we can hardly hold

that against him. Her father however epitomizes everything that those who would expel illegal

immigrants point to as illicit behavior.

He arrived from what is now the Ukraine and then was part of the Austria-Hungary empire, although

the family is Russian (with a German last name), with his mother, grandmother and brothers. All

arrived with fake passports and assumed names. When he died—about 12 years ago, so don’t go

looking for him—we found a brief autobiography that he’s written, along with a map of his village in

the aforementioned area. This hand-drawn map of the village marked the family residence along withthe residence of the person (her husband) they were fleeing the village to escape. Hence the assumed

identities. He did not indicate on the map who forged the documents The family made its way to NYC

and he eventually met my grandmother, the only member of that generation who was born in the US

and has no skeletons in her closet.

So, my parents the anchor babies, here tonight, born in Wilkes-Barre PA and Jamaica Queens

respectively, (I always thought it was really cool that my mother was Jamaican until I found out there

there were 2 places with that name) ask that you please not deport them. They’re nice people, they

haven’t done anything wrong, they like it here, and they have no where else to go.