The family of one of California's remaining GOP Congressman, well promoted as dairy farmers in the Central Valley actually relocated to the Congressional district in Iowa of Steve King. The move took place a decade ago, long before he worked in Trump's election campaign. He still owns property in the state, an interest in a Napa Valley winery and he still has an uncle in Tulare, which the Wall Street Journal photographed as his family's dairy farm.

"Until late August, neither Nunes nor the local California press that covers him had ever publicly mentioned that his family dairy is no longer in Tulare. ... In 2010 Nunes traveled to northwest Iowa to campaign for Steve King, the most anti-immigrant member of Congress, who now represents Nunes's parents, brother, and sister-in-law in Sibley. It was an unusual place to find Devin Nunes, given that at the time he wasn't known to be hostile to immigrants in the way that has made King, who has called illegal immigration a "slow-motion terrorist attack," so infamous.
King's office posted a press release online announcing that the town-hall event would be in Le Mars, a town fifty miles southwest of Sibley, and included some biographical information about Nunes, including this fact: "Congressman Nunes' family has operated a dairy farm in Tulare County, California for three generations." There was no mention that the Nunes family actually lived up the road in Sibley, where they operated a dairy. Strange."

What makes this information ironic is that dairy farms in IOWA are wholly dependent on undocumented immigrants for their labor force. The Esquire article below provides a rather in depth look at the immigration hypocrisy in Northern Iowa and the danger to the economy that Trump and King present to dairy farmers like Nunes' immediate family.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a23471864/devin-nunes-family-farm-iowa-california/

I am probably related to Devin Nunes except that the Nunes in our family pronounced their name "noons"
Devin's family has chosen to use the Spanish pronunciation of "nunez". My Azorean (Portuguese) great grandparents came from the same islands as some of his ancestors and have some surnames in common. e.g. Silveira and Bettencourt. I have wondered why Devin, who claims to be Portuguese, doesn't use the original Azorean pronunciation of his surname.

Back in 70's, 80's, 90's, until my retirement a few years back I tried to claim Hispanic heritage and the EEO officials refused saying that the Portuguese were not Hispanic, even though the Federal Hispanic Heritage month honored the Portuguese and Spanish cultures. My protests earned me weak on EEO performance evaluations. I suspect that the Nunes family decided that there were more benefits to appearing Spanish.
However even though Devin's publicist claims him to be 100% Portuguese, his grandparents having immigrated from the Azores,he can't be, he had a grandfather from Oklahoma. And all his grandparents were born in the US. The immigrants in his family tree were great great grandparents and great grandparents, contemporaries of my grandparents from the Azores. So Devin's publicized heritage as the grandson of recent immigrants (the last one arrived in 1911) is about as close to the facts as the family dairy farm in Iowa/Tulare.

But those are not the only reasons I dispute his 100% Portuguese heritage. In 2017, for Christmas, I bought DNA test kits for myself and my mother. I knew little of my father's side and had suspicions in the family tree, a great great grandfather appeared to have died two years before my great grandfather was born. To figure out the heritage on my fathers side, I just needed to eliminate the Azorean- Portuguese heritage from my mother's DNA test. I did find a few surprises on my father's side; but the biggest surprise was that my mother was not Portuguese or Hispanic. I guess those EEO officials had been right all along, even though for the wrong reasons. After reflection it made sense, the Azores are In the middle of the Atlantic, who settles islands? Sailors and hundreds of years ago where were the sailors making these voyages from? the Mediterranean. And whose Empire circled the Mediterranean? The Romans. And that why my mother's Portuguese DNA is primarily Italian along with every shore of the Mediterranean, including the Iberian peninsula, as well as distant parts on the Roman Empire like England. I suspect cousin Nunes is likely more Italian than than he has admitted. And "Lurking among the non-Azorean branches of his family tree is a relative with an unexpected and reassuring name: Robert Mueller."

Now that his ass is uncovered by the Democrats controlling the House, I suspect more will be learned about his apparent hypocrisy in supporting an out of state Congressman more than his own district near Tulare.
If you are interested in learning more about the Nunes family in California, much of it is typical of Azorean immigrants including my other relatives, read the article below. My grandparents learned to read and write English, but like Devin I had relatives who could not read or write in any language, but spoke English and Portuguese. And chain immigration is the heart of the Azorean immigrant's history in California

https://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2018/05/nunes-pretends-to-be-100-portuguese-but.html

My wife's paternal grandmother was born in Fall River, MA in about 1913. Her parents had separately emigrated from the Azores on either side of the turn of the century, meeting and marrying in Fall River. There were MANY (!!!) "Greenhorns" from the Azores working in the textile mills there, and the town maintains the genetic and cultural history to this day.

I am into genealogy and understand their were from St. Michaels, Azores. I have looked up on google maps...

I'm curious about Azores emigration patterns, if you have a book or something?. Grandma told me they were extremely poor there, with dirt floors. I heard an aunt did the DNA test and some African blood showed up. Makes sense. Grandma had slightly olive skin, her mother Maria in the photo more so. Two of my daughters have darker skin if only to allow for a tan. One of those has deep brown eyes and the other blue eyes. The other 3 daughters are more blond and blue. It's all interesting stuff.

I have 4000 people in my family tree and discovered that my wife and I share 3 sets of grandparents from 1600's CT. I have 7 presidents as distant cousins in our combined tree, and many many other famous people. I am descended from one Mayflower passenger (Brewster), my stepfather from another (Doty), and a brother in law from a third (Alden). In fact, 10% of the US, they estimate, can claim descendency from the Mayflower. Ben Franklin was a first cousin of one of my grandmothers.

The point is that we are all so much more interconnected and related than we think. I abhor how people like Trump (and I suppose you'd add King and Nunes, I don't know them well) seek to exploit divisions and paranoias within us to further their small world view agendas.

Do I believe that we should have open immigration? No.
Do I believe that we should have greater empathy for folks who seek to arrive and be a part of this country? Absolutely!! They are our relatives.

concordtom said:

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My wife's paternal grandmother was born in Fall River, MA in about 1913. Her parents had separately emigrated from the Azores on either side of the turn of the century, meeting and marrying in Fall River. There were MANY (!!!) "Greenhorns" from the Azores working in the textile mills there, and the town maintains the genetic and cultural history to this day.

I am into genealogy and understand their were from St. Michaels, Azores. I have looked up on google maps...

I'm curious about Azores emigration patterns, if you have a book or something?. Grandma told me they were extremely poor there, with dirt floors. I heard an aunt did the DNA test and some African blood showed up. Makes sense. Grandma had slightly olive skin, her mother Maria in the photo more so. Two of my daughters have darker skin if only to allow for a tan. One of those has deep brown eyes and the other blue eyes. The other 3 daughters are more blond and blue. It's all interesting stuff.

...

Do I believe that we should have open immigration? No.
Do I believe that we should have greater empathy for folks who seek to arrive and be a part of this country? Absolutely!! They are our relatives.

---

CCT,

I have relatives in Fall River as well. it was an Azorean destination.
Sao Miguel ( the big Island...), aka the Green Island. My family is from Faial and Flores in the center island group. Some of Nunes family is from nearby Sao Jorge.

Azorean migration patterns were pretty much shaped by chain immigration, with the early immigrants financially sponsoring relatives who due to sponsoring tended to to stay in the area. Thus the early destinations of Fall River, Connecticut, Ontario and Central California became the destinations of several generations. Even though immigration slowed after WWI due to the Eugenics act, I was aware of family sponsored (chain) immigration well into the 1970s. After my grandmother's death in 1967 my grandfather returned to the islands where he remarried and passed away in 1980. I visited for his 90th birthday in 1977 with my mother. We went to her mother's home town where her mother's younger brother and sister still lived in a stone dwelling with dirt floors. They were so proud, they finally got electricity the year before and now had a single light bulb in their large communal room. On the road to their house we passed a man, likely in his 80's, carrying a 100kg sack of rice up a hill to his house.
Now that I am 70 that sight is still a vivid mental image.

As far as genealogy, the islands were settled by sailors on the 15th century. Historically the sailors were from the shores of the old Roman Empire. Two years ago my DNA showed traces from all the shores of the Mediterranean and the British Isles, from Ireland to Palestine the DNA was Roman. My DNA heritage is almost completely Roman Empire, but my grandparents considered themselves Portuguese but I had great grandparents who were Irish and English..

Thanks to chain immigration, the Azorean immigrants planted deep roots and stayed put. Their relatives by sponsoring their immigration had a financial stake on their becoming good citizens, contrary to merit based immigration where many plan to repatriate and take outsourced business with them.

Thx.
I enjoyed reading that.

Still dirt floors? Wow!