What is ironic? Perhaps in Tancredo's case the melting pot worked and assimilation actually occurred and he identifies more with the Mayflower and the United States than with diversity and the universal/proposition nation bit.
And, perhaps, it worked in our case too.
We came to the U.S. from Cuba in August of 1960 and, by November of 1965, my uncle had already earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star with Combat V at Landing Zone X-Ray at the Battle of Ia Drang and is now listed on seven different pages of the index of "We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young".
Forty six years later, between my uncle, my brother, my sister and myself, we have 44 years of combined military service to the U.S. including my uncle's retirement after only 12 years because of multiple war wounds.
By contrast, Tom Tancredo, according to his biography went straight from college to being a high school teacher to being a politician and never served a single day in the U.S. Armed Forces in all of his entire life.
After three generations here, Tom Tancredo "talks the talk" but my Cuban-born, first American generation family "walked the walk" in service to the United States of America.
As far as I am concerned, Tom Tancredo can take his slur regarding Miami's Cuban-born community and cram it where the sun don't shine.
Anyone who will cross the Florida Straits from Cuba to the U.S. mainland on a raft to reach freedom deserves U.S. citizenship. That area is one of the most dangerous waters in the world. The Rio Grande it is not. It takes a lot of courage to take a risk like that. As one who has found these wood & styrofoam rafts as far north as 29 degrees and as far west as 88 degrees in the Gulf, I often wondered about its occupants...whether or not they lived...the weather they had to endure. In the 1994 raft exodus I found four in a one week period. Only one had the orange paint that the CG sprays a raft with after they rescue someone from it. They spray paint the raft and leave it in the water. Captains are alerted via ‘Notice to Mariners’ in such events.
Some of those loop currents around Cuba are murderous.