Operation Wetback

[NNN0LHI]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback

Operation Wetback was a 1954 project of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service to remove illegal immigrants, primarily Mexican – known by the derogatory term "wetbacks" – from the southwestern United States.

Burgeoning numbers of these immigrants, discovered by the Border Patrol in the early 1950s, prompted INS Commissioner Gen. Joseph Swing to initiate the project.

The operation coordinated the Border Patrol and state and local police agencies to mount an aggressive crackdown, going as far as police sweeps of Mexican-American neighborhoods and random stops and ID checks of "Mexican-looking" people in a region with many Native Americans and native Hispanics.

Operation Wetback successfully deported approximately one million illegal Mexican immigrants in the space of almost a year, although its perceived heavy-handed methods raised among some people reactions of public outrage and accusations of police-state tactics, which forced the operation to end.

[Katherine Brengle]

1. Yippee!!! More racial profiling and...

exclusionary government policies please!

:sarcasm:

[Sal316]

2. Hmm, sounds familiar.

..."going as far as police sweeps of Mexican-American neighborhoods and random stops and ID checks of "Mexican-looking" people in a region with many Native Americans and native Hispanics.

The city of Chandler got busted doing this just a couple of years ago.

The 'anti-mexican' hysteria here in AZ is getting out of control.

[MrTriumph]

3. Don't you just hate it when the gov't enforces the law?

x

[acmejack]

5. The issue at hand is the manner in which they enforce it.

In 1954, here in the Southwest, I have a real good idea how it went. I can remember the prevailing social climate well enough to venture an informed guess how the police of the era would have conducted an operation of this type.

[MrTriumph]

7. No, that's not really the issue. The focus should be on Am workers

who have suffered lost jobs and depressed wages.

[Inland]

8. Only if the manner is "intended to fail".

That's the manner in which immigration laws are enforced now: with the full intent that they not be effective. I"m looking for the statistic now, and can't find it, but Harpers reports 17000 illegals caught in INS raids on workplaces in 1997, and 437 in 2003.

So the point of the OP is basically put the police practices of 1940 into a board of today's issues and hope someone makes a connection out of mere proximity. The least of the worries is that there's going to be dragnets on the streets, given Bush's desire for a large pool of cheap, voteless labor. But it's typical of the level of discusssion.

[sadiesworld]

9. I remember seeing an article in LBN a while back that referred

to those stats. In addition to the figures you give it also inclued a figure of approximately 4K for I believe 1991. The article was then changed to eliminate the 17K figue (for pretty obvious reasons I'd say).

[MADem]

4. Well, see, their usefulness had expired!!

They were happy as hell for the help when WW2 got underway, but then, after the war, there was only so much Marshall Planning and GI Billing that could keep the troops busy as they commenced a massive demobbing effort. The ladies had to get out of the workforce and back in the kitchen where they belonged, and those Mexicans had to be shoved back across the border to make room for the white man to earn his daily white bread....

They actually had a FORMAL PROGRAM -- a guest worker program, if you will -- called BRACERO that supported the Mexican assistance to the US war effort.

The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture was assigned the responsibility of recruiting, contracting, transporting, feeding, and lodging the temporary farmworkers. So began the "Bracero program," the Spanish word braceros meaning "the strong armed ones. The railroad worker portion of the program, which imported workers to expand rail yards, lay track at port facilities, and replace worn rails-all part of the war effort-stayed in effect until 1945 and employed about 100,000 men.

The farmworker portion of the program was originally thought to be temporary, but after the war, the nation's growers, particularly those in California, vigorously supported the extension of the farm labor portion of the Bracero program, which eventually remained in effect for four decades.

In the post-war years, an even larger force of Mexican workers crossed into California and the Southwest to work in the fields. The exact numbers of these "illegal immigrants" or "undocumented workers" were never really known, although estimates are that each year more than 500,000 undocumented people worked on farms in California and in other states of the region.

In 1951 Congress adopted Public Law 78 as a "Korean war emergency" measure, which gave special legislative recognition to a new agreement with Mexico. In effect, the law and its emergency status produced the most comprehensive plan for importing contract workers that the nation had ever formulated. The actions also formed the basis for the continuation of the Bracero program, which outlasted the Korean War by 11 years....

http://www.museumca.org/picturethis/4_3.html

[sadiesworld]

6. The Bracero program had no greater friend than the growers...

and no greater foe than Cesar Chavez and the UFW. The program was shut down in 1964 by liberal dems following Edward R. Murrows' expose Harvest of Shame which spotlighted the terrible working conditions endured by migrant workers due to the importation of illegal labor.

The migrant workers experienced strong gains in wages and benefits following the shutdown of the program and those gains continued until Reagan took office and the flood of illegal immigration resumed. Most of those gains have since been lost.

[NNN0LHI]

10. ...checks of "Mexican-looking" people...

Think I am going to stay out of the tanning booth for a while.

Don