Venezuelan Migrant to Chicago Says There is No American Dream: “It doesn’t exist.”
By John Kass
November 15, 2023
Have you heard the one about the Venezuelan migrant who couldn’t make it in America and so he declared that the American Dream was dead and then went home?
“The American Dream doesn’t exist anymore,” construction worker Michael Casteljon, 30, whined to a sympathetic reporter from Chicago after sleeping on the floor of a police station for a few weeks.
“There’s nothing here for us,” he said. “We just want to be home.”
OK, go home. Too bad. Mr. Casteljon. Go home. Bye. You’ved had a long, dangerous journey and now you’re exhausted. So go back to Venezuela and hope the communists occasionally let you fill your belly with beans and rice. But you’re wrong about the American dream.
It does exist. My life is testament to it. You’re just not cut out for it.
And it’s not your fault that you believed the American president and his party of Democrats. They promised and they broke all their promises and you were witless enough to believe them, like so many other Democrat voters in Chicago. The wealthy among them waved their virtue and signaled it long and high and loud. Then they walked away leaving you alone. They turned their back on poor migrants in Martha’s Vineyard and they broke their promises in Chicago.
The amazing thing is that you’re not dead. Your family is alive. It’s not your fault. As the son and grandson of immigrants, I wish it turned out differently for you.
Just go home and realize the important thing that no amount of whining or fanciful stories about the unfairness of it all, and your loser excuse that there’s no such thing as the American dream makes you sound like an idiot communist, some American college professor or a silky liar like Barack Obama.
America is the land of exceptionalism. And the exceptional people prosper.
Your problem? You just didn’t have what it takes to be an American. Go home now. Go home.
What the old immigrants of decades and decades ago understood was that freedom is a dangerous thing. It can kill you. My ancestor’s have a saying, “Freedom or Death.” It is not a joke.
He couldn’t find what he was looking for. He did not find America’s streets paved with gold. He did not win the magical lottery ticket promising free stuff for life. He did not even become a Chicago Democrat with a cushy city desk job and soft hands and a six-figure pension.
But neither did my grandfathers.
When my grandfathers came to Chicago and survived their first winter, they slept in a barn. Greeks weren’t allowed to sleep indoors. They called us “dirty Greeks” and there were no sympathetic reporters to cry on. But then, Casteljon and the reporters interested in chronicling his needs and wants in 2023 weren’t all that concerned about my grandfathers who came here in the late 1800s.
Casteljohn and the sympathetic reporters of Chicago didn’t care about the Italians, the Jews, the Poles, the Mexicans, and the Irish who were told they need not apply. They were narrowly focused on other things.
My paternal grandfather, Papou Yianni carried heavy loads of vegetables on his back, to sell them as a street fruit peddler. It took years for him to save enough for a wagon. And more years to save for a horse. He had no certain future. There was no welfare state for an illiterate Greek. He had to fight to keep his sleeping spot in the barn. He had a knife.
And my maternal grandfather, Papou Pete, didn’t have a sympathetic reporter to whine to, either. He worked in a shoe factory and learned the distant cousin he roomed with was stealing his money, and the money that all the boys were earning to send home to the mountain villages. I don’t exactly know what happened. I do know that he was alone, just a little boy, and ended up alone riding the rails with the hoboes all the way to Utah.
He worked on the railroads, probably climbing up the mountains with dynamite to blow holes in the mountains. The railroad barons didn’t care if a little Greek kid alone died up there.
But he cared. And though he did not have sympathetic reporters to whine for him, he survived.
Later, Papou Pete shined shoes for money to buy food, travelling all the way to Panama and back. And later became a prizefighter in American bare-knuckled street fights for money. He wasn’t ashamed. He was becoming an American and knew you had to fight for it.
All the Venezuelan people got was a hard uncertain future and a tent to sleep in with the hard Chicago winter coming. And perhaps time to reflect on President Joe Biden’s broken promises.
Because it was Biden babbling on during a Democratic presidential debate, telling the world’s poor to “surge to the border.”
“I would in fact make sure that there is, that we immediately surge to the border — all those people are seeking asylum. They deserve to be heard,” said Biden. “That’s who we are. We’re a nation that says, ‘If you want to flee and you’re fleeing oppression, you should come.’”
Flee they did. And come they did, not from Mexico and South America alone, but young men of military age from Iran, Syria and other nightmare nations, surging unfettered by the millions across the Southern border he and the Democrats made sure was left wide open.
Some came wearing Biden T-shirts reading, “Biden, please let us in.” He let them in. They told their friends.
Now millions have come across–many illegally–and only recently as black city residents became angry did the corporate legacy media bother to tell their stories.
There could be terrorists among them. Biden doesn’t know. His failed border bureaucrats don’t know.
Casteljon couldn’t make it here. That’s sad. When we heard about the story, Betty thought about her father, a 10-year-old orphan alone in New Orleans the city where they lynched Italians. He refused to work for the Outfit even when he was starving. And she thought about my grandfathers.
If you’re from immigrant stock—and who isn’t?–I suppose you may have thought about your parents and grandparents.
There was no welfare for them, no safety net. But they knew one thing that all the socialist professors and Bolshevik writers and political hacks and the foolish Barack Obamas refuse to learn:
There is an American Dream. America is an exceptional place. But you have to fight for it.
(Copyright John Kass 2023)
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Comments 24
Americans are scrappers, fighters, strivers. To quote American artist Sly Stweart, “All the Squares Go Home!”
Amen. The American dream takes a lot of hard work and it doesn’t happen overnight. My great grandparents had nothing when they arrived. They all learned English and most of the men joined the military. It’s been good for us ever since.
Excellent, John.
Been thinking about this all morning. This guy confused the potential the American dream holds for the illusory promise of self serving, vote seeking politicians that various government agencies and entities can provide the American dream with promises of sanctuary and government provision.
In a dark time of top-down national stupidity, today’s great Kass column provides a bright beacon of intelligence and toughness. For me it also features some abrasive wisdom reminiscent of another great philosopher: Don Rickles.
So anointed president Magoo followed his handlers’ orders and invited the world’s entitlement seekers to surge here for free room and board, free education and health care, most importantly to become indentured Democrat voters. And after three years the busted machines in Democrat cities are out of free everything?
Boo hoo. Try crying to poor, ignored U.S. citizens — most of them minorities — struggling in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and If-I-Had-A-Hammerville.
As a descendent of brave immigrants to America suggests here with pithy eloquence, “Go home.” Make special haste, skulking terrorists and busy fentanyl dealers. Also community organizers.
John is correct. It’s an interesting thought about the people that came to America from its founding until the 1930s. They took risk by leaving what they knew for total uncertainty. Hence, America is full of risk takers and that risk taking has benefitted us by creating the best lifestyle and best economy anywhere in the world. It’s the best society known in the history of mankind.
But, since welfare, and all the government transfer payments; America has lost its appetite for risk. We want safety. We want certainty.
The American Dream isn’t about guarantees and certainty. It’s about opportunity. With opportunity comes failure. With failure comes the chance to try again.
Great point.
My Grandfather came here from Kiev. That was when the Tsar still ran the place. He came because the Ukranians grabbed his father, marched him back to his home and hung him from the tree in front of his house.
His Mother sent him to a relative in Milwaukee. His first job here was rolling cigars by hand for $1.50 a week. He saved, started his own business and was very well off when he passed away. He understood what the Venezuelan did not. The opportunities are here but no one is going to hand them to you, you have to figure it out for yourself.
I miss that man.
I forgot to mention, the reason the Ukrainians hung my Great-Grandfather was because we are Jews.
Not a good thing to be in imperial Russia.
Putin isn’t wrong when he says Ukrainians are nazis. Many were and too many still are.
There IS an American Dream still alive and well. But to grab it, you must become American. You must desire to leave your old self behind and work toward Americanism. That doesn’t mean that you can’t practice your old culture when at home or worshiping. It means that you must assimilate in your new home. Americans first. Multiculturalism is killing us. To whom will you pledge your allegiance?
https://open.substack.com/pub/commonfolk365/p/theyve-all-come-to-look-for-america?r=18wcni&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
John, this is such a needed column. From what I can remember of my grandfather on my mother’s side, he was proud to become an American so much that he would not speak Italian out in public. He was too proud. He embraces his Italian heritage but placed it in the context of assimilating to his new life in America. Tomaso Bellino was so proud of being an American he named my uncle Rocco Americo Bellino! Something that’s missing from today’s immigration policies – stressing America first!
Jim- are you related to Tom Bellino, Bell Pk??
Excellent article. Mr. Casteljon should have been reminded of the saying, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.”
Excellent article Mr. Kass. My parents and in-laws immigrated to America with a dream. No hand outs just family and hard work. People need to watch the 1990s movie “Avalon” to fully appreciate what their grandparents or great grandparents did to become successful American citizens.
Great Article.
My grandparents and parents came from Germany. Didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it of. Took them years of hard work. But they did make it. Its no wonder that they had sons who became engineers and doctors. Grandsons and Granddaughters with MBA’s and PHD’s. Great grandchildren with Masters and PHD’s. Its all hard work and nothing is easy. You are so right.
10-4 John.
Jeff made a great point in the podcast when he said that the economy has changed. We don’t have the jobs for so many unskilled workers. But it’s more than that. The same problems that hurt these new immigrants are effecting our poor and lower middle class. The cost of housing is through the roof. Rents are astronomical and there’s very little supply of affordable apartments, let alone houses.
We cannot even take care of the people here and we are beckoning unskilled illiterates to “surge the border”. That is cruel.
We had to get Covid shots while those caught and released at the border, were allowed entry into the US. No Covid test, no shot, we don’t even know who they are.
But these people are not the enemy. It’s our government officials who have sold us out and use the media to play us all for chumbolones.
There are still plenty sleeping in barns John. They still sleep with a knife. That didn’t go away. We just ignore them.
I spent a lot of time with my grandparents when I was a kid. My grandfather was born in 1889 in New York, was in the Navy during WWI and lied about his age so he could also serve during WWII. My other grandfather, born in New York in 1902, and my father were both in the Army, my uncle was in the Air Force during WWII and later became an Air Force doctor. My great grandparents and grandparents didn’t get wealthy but loved America and lived the American Dream. Their perspective on life, country, community and self reliance is so different than society today. Plenty of Americans still think and live this way, but too many don’t and want everything for free. Europe was far from perfect, its why so many of our ancestors are here, but their understanding of hard work and distrust of government is in part why America great. Sorry newbies, you’re not summering in the Hamptons your first year in America.
I need to proof read. LOL. Apparently my ancestors sacrifices didn’t lead to a proper English education.
The original American dream was to believe and speak freely, to be self sufficient and to live without fear. That universal dream is on the ropes
Bravo!
Another tremendous, soul-stirring story, the kind which resonates for me, even if I never carried a knife or gun!
My father was born into poverty in a tenement in old Montreal. He “fought the French” every day on the way to school. He started working at age 16 for the largest insurance company in Canada. He was chosen because he was the top student in mathematics, so they put him in the investment department at $1200 per year, in 1929. The next year, with the Depression underway, they lowered his salary to $1,000. ($18,000 in today’s dollars). over the next 31 years (except in WWII) he successfully helped invest in their huge bond portfolio. From 1939-1945 he served 6 years in the RCAF in England as a radar operator, for which he was cited for the cool-under-fire action of bringing in a bomber which was crippled and with the pilot and co-pilot seriously injured. He returned to Montreal to find that the men he had trained were now his superiors in the investment department. Nothing was the same.
In 1960, 32 years after he started with the Sun Life, he with a family of five to support, and debts mounting up, we moved to Madison, Wisconsin. The “Democratic rag,” the Capital Times, featured his hiring as Bond Director for the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, and whined, “Couldn’t we have found a qualified American for this job?”
Originally I didn’t like America. I was small for my age, extremely bright (the other kids hated that, except some bright girls and a boy or two), was picked on, ridiculed for my accent, and was beaten up by groups of “hoods” who were my classmates. In groups of three they tripped me, held me down, spat on me, kicked me, and rubbed dirt all over me, while I squirmed and shouted abuse at them. Later, I tended to counterattack boys who picked on me by quickly leaping to them and strongly throttling their throats while they sputtered in terror. Then they left me alone!
Finally I found a true friend and realized that I could become a respected person in America. I had fought and survived.
Thanks for allowing me to recount this!
Amen!