Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Ah, Thanksgiving week—that magical time of year when America pauses to reflect on gratitude, family, and, of course, the rich tradition of people whose great-great-grandparents stumbled off a boat with zero paperwork now demanding to see everyone else’s papers.

It’s truly inspiring to watch modern-day deportation crusaders, chests puffed out like overcooked turkeys, proclaim that this land must be protected from “outsiders.” Outsiders—like their own ancestors, who arrived clutching nothing but a dream, a prayer, and an absolutely stunning lack of documentation. The irony is so thick you could baste a bird with it.

Let’s be honest: most of today’s immigration hardliners come from a lineage that didn’t just show up without papers—they showed up without invitations, without language skills, without respect for local customs, and in many cases, without the slightest intention of coexisting peacefully. And how did the natives respond? With a grace that, in hindsight, seems almost tragically generous. They welcomed them. Fed them. Helped them survive winters. Shared land, resources, crops, knowledge.

And how did that go?

Well… let’s just say the Yelp review would read: “Zero stars. Visitors overstayed their welcome by about 400 years.”

Fast forward to today, and their descendants—the ones who benefited from every open door their ancestors barged through—are now proudly insisting that the gate must be slammed shut. Permanently. Bolted. Welded. Preferably electrified.

It’s almost impressive, really. It takes a special kind of historical blindfold to look at the land your ancestors took without consent, built upon with the help of people they either displaced or enslaved, and declare, “Actually, we were the good immigrants. The last good ones, in fact.”

This Thanksgiving, while turkeys roast and families gather, perhaps the loudest voices demanding deportations might pause—just for a moment—to reflect on the cosmic audacity of their argument. Because if America had enforced their preferred immigration policies back when their own ancestors arrived, the family tree would look a whole lot shorter.

And maybe, just maybe, they’d realize that the people they’re trying to expel look a whole lot like the people who once welcomed their people in. And we all know how that turned out for the folks already living here.

But hey—Happy Thanksgiving! A perfect time to remember that the first people to demand strict immigration control arrived uninvited, made themselves at home, and immediately started rewriting the rules.

Some traditions, it seems, never die.