Kira Rambles

I was born because my father got kicked out of law school. A first generation college student, let alone graduate student, he had no financial support from his family, and he worked full time through his secondary and postsecondary education. After completing the first two years of his Juris Doctor at the University of Colorado Boulder, he calculated the minimum number of classes he needed to attend to graduate and packed his work schedule around that figure. Then his ethics teacher changed the attendance requirement from 50% to 75%. My Dad failed the class, lost his academic standing, and had to wait a year before he could reapply and finish his last semester. During that year, even though he wasn’t an enrolled CU student, he helped run the Campus Kung-Fu club, where he met a pre-med student I know as Mom. 

That Romantic Comedy could happen anywhere. The significant part of the story, at least now, is how two people of combined British, German, Native American, and Spanish heritage ended up in a meet-cute scenario at all. 

My Dad was born in Trinidad, CO. His father’s family is Hispano, from the community of mixed Indigenous and Spanish colonial descent that has inhabited Southwest Colorado since the sixteenth century. His mother self-identifies as Pennsylvania Dutch from Ohio. My mother’s father is a third-generation German American, and my maternal grandmother was Scots Canadian and immigrated to the United States as a young adult. 

The plain truth is, without compounding centuries of birthright citizenship, I would not exist. Most of us wouldn’t. 

The American Immigration Council reports that 11% of Coloradans have at least one immigrant parent, like my Mom. That’s over a half a million people in this state alone. Go back a few more generations, and the number of people with an immigrant ancestor becomes almost all-inclusive. Especially in the West. My parents’ story is not uncommon, and, hopefully, that continues to be true. 

We don’t know how legal challenges to the recent executive order that tries to revoke birthright citizenship will play out, but in the meantime, before you say you don’t support immigrants and birthright citizenship, take a hard look at your own family tree.