Andrea Mitchell on Mitt Romney’s Ancestors: ‘They Crossed the Border Illegally’
There have been many accusations made against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney from conservative opponents, liberals and the media, in regards to his record at Bain, record on abortion, and record on Romneycare. But few have questioned the immigration record of his ancestors. On The Chris Matthews Show Sunday, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell went there:
"And looking ahead to the next primary in Florida, 30 percent of the Hispanic community is Cuban-American. That’s a smaller proportion, and so the Hispanic community there is different. And they are less prone to be susceptible to Mitt Romney’s really hard line on immigration, more prone to the Newt Gingrich approach to immigration. The other interesting little fact is about the Mexican Romneys, those looking back at all of those records say that Mitt Romney should look back at the records because the Romneys that came back from Mexico to the United States, they crossed the border illegally."
NewsBusters Noel Sheppard first speculated that Mitchell's claim could have come from a Sunday NPR report on the Romney's Mexican relatives, however Sheppard notes that the story said nothing about any of his relatives coming to America illegally. NPR's John Burnett told James Crugnale of Mediaite that he did not come across any documents indicating that the Gaskell Romney family came to the United States illegally, noting that they were part of an exodus of 1,200 Mormons from Mexico. Miles Park Romney was Mitt's great grandfather, who fled the United States and crossed into Mexico in 1885 to escape religious persecution. There he helped build the Mormon enclave of Colonia Juarez in Chihuahua-- while having four wives and 30 children. Mitt's father George was born in born in Mexico in 1907 to the monogamous Gaskell and Anna Romney. NPR reports that George's family left Mexico when he was five. In the United States George went on to be an auto executive, governor of Michigan, and a presidential candidate. In article published last week entitled "Could Mitt Romney be America's first Hispanic president?", CNN's Ruben Navarrette Jr. reports that Romney's ancestors crossed into Mexico but never became Mexican citizens:
"Miles Park Romney never became a Mexican citizen, and neither did his son, Gaskell, or grandson, George. They were all denied Mexican citizenship because statutes on the books in Mexico denied that right to American settlers and their offspring."
NPR spoke with the 2012 presidential candidate's distant relatives still living in Chihuahua, where they say there are about about 40 Romneys. While they have never met, the devout Mormon Romneys of Mexico tell NPR that they have been avidly following Mitt, and are cheering him on. "I think that if Mitt wins this president of the United States it's because God wants him there," Miles Romney tells NPR. "I think the U.S. is gonna fall to pieces and I don't think the Lord's work is done yet on this earth. And if he makes it in there it's because God wants him in there."
