When a Member of Congress Says America Comes Second

Democrat Rep. Delia Ramirez went to Mexico City, stepped up to the microphone, and in Spanish declared, “I am a proud Guatemalan before I am an American.”

This wasn’t an innocent nod to ancestry at a community picnic; no, no, it was a deliberate proclamation by a sitting member of Congress, made on foreign soil, that her first loyalty belongs somewhere other than the United States. She offered this hierarchy of allegiance while serving on the House Homeland Security Committee, the very panel responsible for safeguarding the nation she publicly ranked second.

I understand the meaning of choosing one country over another because my family had to make that choice. We left communist Cuba in 1968 when I was seven. I watched soldiers arrest my father, force him through the streets in a “shame parade,” and send him to a labor camp before we were allowed to leave. My parents left everything—home, family, history—because they believed that in America, allegiance is complete, not conditional. We did not risk everything so that decades later I could stand in another country and assure the one we left behind that it still came first.

Ramirez claims Guatemala comes before the United States in her personal hierarchy. Yet this professed loyalty has not translated into any serious effort to confront Guatemala’s realities—realities that include staggering poverty, systemic corruption, rampant gang violence, and some of the worst malnutrition rates in the hemisphere. Nearly 60% of Guatemalans live below the poverty line, and for many, the only viable future is to leave. Her allegiance to Guatemala appears far more ceremonial than practical. It’s also incredibly hypocritical.

And leave they do. The very Guatemalans she elevates above Americans are risking everything to escape their country. They cross deserts, cram themselves into suffocating trucks, and risk drowning in rivers, not to return to Guatemala, but to reach the United States. Their actions speak volumes: America is the destination, the goal, the place worth gambling life itself for. If Ramirez listened to them instead of congratulating herself for idiotic and faux-symbolic declarations, she might understand what they already know.

Rep. Carlos Gimenez, another Cuban exile, understands it perfectly. He knows that serving on a national security committee requires complete and undivided loyalty to the United States. Without that, the integrity of the position collapses.

When challenged, Ramirez sidesteps the issue by using Democrat Playbook 101 tactics and accuses her critics of “nativism” and “white supremacy.” Please. Reducing the conversation to political name-calling doesn’t answer the central problem, and the problem is her own damn words.

Pride in heritage is one thing; publicly stating that heritage outranks a constitutional oath is another. It signals a clear set of priorities, and priorities matter in public service.

If Ramirez truly places Guatemala first, then she should embrace that commitment in action as well as words. She should step down from Homeland Security and dedicate her influence to addressing the poverty, corruption, and violence that plague her “first” country. Until that happens, her rhetoric about patriotism and service will remain little more than performance. She has already told us, with striking clarity, where her loyalty begins and where it ends.

Que Clase De Come Mierda