NEW YORK – In recent days, Governor Andrew Cuomo has represented his life story. They entail the circumstances of his birth, upbringing and financial status, and are as follows:
1) According to a transcript from a public event on Tuesday, Cuomo said he was “raised by poor immigrants.”
FACT: Cuomo was born to and raised by Mario Cuomo, a lawyer who became governor and was born in New York City, and mother Matilda, who was born in Brooklyn. He was raised by these parents. As to being poor, Mrs. Cuomo said of her children, “They never ate out of cans. I had a written menu for every night.”
2) According to published reports, Cuomo said about his financial status: “I’m a middle class guy. That’s who I am.”FACT: According to the NY Department of Health, the median household income in New York is between $60,000-70,000 a year. Cuomo was son of a governor, who worked as a partner at a corporate law firm representing real estate interests, sold a book for a $700,000 advance, earns nearly triple the median salary, and lives in a more-than million dollar home.
3) According to reports, Cuomo said last week that he is “an undocumented person.”
FACT: Andrew Cuomo is not undocumented. He is an American citizen.
“Governor Cuomo’s recent pattern of falsehoods and exaggerations about his life story is a sad and disturbing turn of events for New York,” said Antonio Alarcon, a member of Make the Road Action, the state’s largest immigrant organization. “… It’s disturbing because it serves to diminish and undermine the very real struggles of millions of New Yorkers.
“To Dreamers and immigrants like me, these fabrications are offensive. I’d like to refresh the Governor’s memory: contrary to the lies he’s telling the public, his parents were not immigrants, his family was not poor, and he has no idea what it’s like to live as an undocumented person. For those of us who came to this country with our parents to find a better life, and have struggled daily to get by and faced the threat of being torn from our family, it’s unbelievable that the Governor would try to claim to have shared our experience. It’s even worse coming from someone who has failed repeatedly to use his political capital for our community’s top priorities in Albany—including the New York Dream Act and passing driver’s licenses for all.”
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