Jeb Bush Knows All About Being An Immigrant, Except The Being An Immigrant Part

Señor Jeb Bush was in Puerto Rico the other day to say hola to all his amigos and engage in a little pandering. Because Jeb Bush is married to a Mexican lady, so while he’s not actually a 'Spanic himself, he understands the immigrant experience for all those who journey to the United States. And he wants the the Puerto Rican 'Spanics to know that, despite having no representation in the legislature of the country that governs their territory, they are still mas importante to the yanquis , especially those yanquis who want their votes in the Republican Party primary next year, comprende? 

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I know the power of the immigrant experience because I live it each and every day. I know the immigrant experience because I married a beautiful girl from Mexico. My children are bicultural and bilingual.

Let us stop you right there, el patron. Your wife might be a lovely woman, but between the experience of your average Mexican immigrant to the United States and the experience of Columba Bush marrying into an old and very wealthy family of patrician New England WASPs lies a chasm so vast that Evel Knevel wouldn’t try to jump it even if you swaddled him in bubble wrap and filled the gap with a mountain of down-stuffed pillows. No matter how much trouble Columba might have had assimilating into Jeb’s family and into America in general, she could always soothe herself the way the idle rich so often do: with massive shopping sprees. Your story is not exactly The Tortilla Curtain, know what we’re saying?

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As for your kids, yes, they are bicultural and bilingual. They are also the children of a two-term governor of Florida and have two former presidents in their bloodline. Not to mention the last name of Bush. Which, come to think of it, is not necessarily a blessing. Still, they are not exactly working-class kids sharing an apartment in a bad neighborhood with ten relatives sleeping in shifts on the three available beds, hoping to make it into Cal State-Fullerton on a scholarship and become the first member of the family to earn a college degree.

But what do we know? Maybe this I’m-down-with-the-struggle pandering will help reverse the Republican Party’s losses with Hispanic voters. And so long as Jeb doesn’t mention immigration reform that would do anything except shoot out of a cannon back across the Rio Grande the bicultural, bilingual Hispanic children here illegally who didn’t hit the genetic jackpot of being born into the Bush family, maybe he can also hold onto enough of the GOP base of nativist shitlords to snag the nomination.

Just don’t admit you’d go to a gay wedding if invited, Jebbie. Then you’re really fucked.

[ New York Times ]