In Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks outside Congress last Thursday in which she teared up over ICE’s purported inhumanity, she indirectly made an argument for why she believed illegal aliens have a right to be in the U.S.
“We have to have respect for children, respect for families, respect for human rights and respect for the right of human mobility. Because it is a right. It is a right,” she told a small crowd, adding:
Because we are standing on native land, and Latino people are descendants of native people. And we cannot be told and criminalized simply for our identity or our status. Period.
You can watch the remarks beginning at 2:15 in the video that follows:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Rep. @AOC is calling on Congress to cut funding to ICE and Border Patrol until they end their abusive treatment of immigrants pic.twitter.com/Nqzz9IEHZ8
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) February 7, 2019
Latino people are descendants of native people? Let’s investigate what the experts have to say about that claim. In 2014, a study was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics titled “The Genetic Ancestry of African Americans, Latinos, and European Americans across the United States.” Using data from 8,663 self-described Latinos, researchers found that 18% of their ancestry could indeed be traced to Native Americans, while another 6.2% is African. But what about the remaining 75.8%? It turns out that 65.1% of Latino ancestry is European. That would explain why Latinos speak Spanish and not some Indian tongue.
Interesting as all of this is, my reason for mentioning it is because it blows a rather sizable hole in Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that Latinos descend from “native people.” Yes, some of them do, but the majority don’t.
Which brings us back to the title question. When she spouts this sort of silliness, as she does tediously often, is it because she believes it herself or is she simply doing what politicians have been doing since the beginning of politics: lying to advance an agenda?
