Alati wouldn\u2019t let bigotry win. He soon sent for his wife and children, including his infant son Salvatore. Alati turned to Alito, Salvatore became Samuel. A generation later, the family had a Supreme Court justice in Samuel A. Alito Jr. \u2014 the second Italian American, after Antonin Scalia, to sit on the highest court in the land.<\/p>\n
During his 2005 confirmation hearings<\/a>, Alito praised his father as an \u201cextraordinary man who came to the United States as a young child and overcame many difficulties\u201d to ensure a better life for him and his sister. By then, Italian Americans were established as an essential part of this country\u2019s fabric, from music to politics to food. <\/p>\n It\u2019s the most American of tales \u2014 which is why it\u2019s so surprising, yet not, to read Alito\u2019s blistering dissent in the Supreme Court\u2019s 6-3 decision rejecting President Trump\u2019s effort to end birthright citizenship<\/a>. <\/p>\n If there\u2019s one constant in this country besides death and taxes, it\u2019s how quickly descendants of immigrants, and sometimes immigrants themselves, forget how loathed their ethnic group was and how they proved the haters wrong. Too many become uncharitable to the policies that helped them and the immigrants who followed.<\/p>\n But Alito\u2019s stance against birthright citizenship goes beyond just forgetting his roots. His 39-page opinion describes the supposed impact of undocumented migrants on the U.S., using words \u2014 \u201coverran,\u201d \u201csoared,\u201d \u201cexploded,\u201d \u201cmassive,\u201d \u201ca stream,\u201d \u201chuge\u201d \u2014 that read like the same invective used against Italians in his grandfather and father\u2019s time.<\/p>\n The justice channels anti-Italian conspiracies of the past by casting doubt on the national allegiances of the U.S.-born children of Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants \u2014 the same patriotism test that Italian Americans faced generations ago when xenophobes questioned their Catholicism. Alito claims without evidence that millions of agricultural workers were able to apply for American citizenship after President Reagan\u2019s 1986 amnesty \u201cat least in part because of fraud\u201d \u2014 a charge also leveled against Italians who sought to naturalize back in the day.<\/p>\n And so it goes, each passage a jumbled argument dressed up in judicial interpretations largely rejected by his fellow Catholic Supreme Court justices John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. Coney Barrett signed on to the majority opinion that Roberts wrote, and Kavanaugh concurred. <\/p>\n Rev. William Barber II speaks during a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 1 while justices heard oral arguments on birthright citizenship.<\/p>\n (Al Drago \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n I know how quickly families forget their own immigrant histories. Yet I look at people like Alito and wonder how they ended up thinking the way they do, because I could never imagine doing the same. <\/p>\n![\"Rev.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1782910992_634_.jpeg\")
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