Nope. Have you seen any in domestic affairs in our party.
Posted on 07/05/2006 6:36:51 PM PDT by AZRepublican
WASHINGTON – George W. Bush isn't the first Republican president to face a full-blown immigration crisis on the US-Mexican border.
Fifty-three years ago, when newly elected Dwight Eisenhower moved into the White House, America's southern frontier was as porous as a spaghetti sieve. As many as 3 million illegal migrants had walked and waded northward over a period of several years for jobs in California, Arizona, Texas, and points beyond.
President Eisenhower cut off this illegal traffic. He did it quickly and decisively with only 1,075 United States Border Patrol agents - less than one-tenth of today's force. The operation is still highly praised among veterans of the Border Patrol.
Although there is little to no record of this operation in Ike's official papers, one piece of historic evidence indicates how he felt. In 1951, Ike wrote a letter to Sen. William Fulbright (D) of Arkansas. The senator had just proposed that a special commission be created by Congress to examine unethical conduct by government officials who accepted gifts and favors in exchange for special treatment of private individuals.
General Eisenhower, who was gearing up for his run for the presidency, said "Amen" to Senator Fulbright's proposal. He then quoted a report in The New York Times, highlighting one paragraph that said: "The rise in illegal border-crossing by Mexican 'wetbacks' to a current rate of more than 1,000,000 cases a year has been accompanied by a curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to the highest levels of the Federal Government."
Years later, the late Herbert Brownell Jr., Eisenhower's first attorney general, said in an interview with this writer that the president had a sense of urgency about illegal immigration when he took office.
America "was faced with a breakdown in law enforcement on a very large scale," Mr. Brownell said. "When I say large scale, I mean hundreds of thousands were coming in from Mexico [every year] without restraint."
Although an on-and-off guest-worker program for Mexicans was operating at the time, farmers and ranchers in the Southwest had become dependent on an additional low-cost, docile, illegal labor force of up to 3 million, mostly Mexican, laborers.
According to the Handbook of Texas Online, published by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas State Historical Association, this illegal workforce had a severe impact on the wages of ordinary working Americans. The Handbook Online reports that a study by the President's Commission on Migratory Labor in Texas in 1950 found that cotton growers in the Rio Grande Valley, where most illegal aliens in Texas worked, paid wages that were "approximately half" the farm wages paid elsewhere in the state.
Profits from illegal labor led to the kind of corruption that apparently worried Eisenhower. Joseph White, a retired 21-year veteran of the Border Patrol, says that in the early 1950s, some senior US officials overseeing immigration enforcement "had friends among the ranchers," and agents "did not dare" arrest their illegal workers.
Walt Edwards, who joined the Border Patrol in 1951, tells a similar story. He says: "When we caught illegal aliens on farms and ranches, the farmer or rancher would often call and complain [to officials in El Paso]. And depending on how politically connected they were, there would be political intervention. That is how we got into this mess we are in now."
Bill Chambers, who worked for a combined 33 years for the Border Patrol and the then-called US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), says politically powerful people are still fueling the flow of illegals.
During the 1950s, however, this "Good Old Boy" system changed under Eisenhower - if only for about 10 years.
In 1954, Ike appointed retired Gen. Joseph "Jumpin' Joe" Swing, a former West Point classmate and veteran of the 101st Airborne, as the new INS commissioner.
Influential politicians, including Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D) of Texas and Sen. Pat McCarran (D) of Nevada, favored open borders, and were dead set against strong border enforcement, Brownell said. But General Swing's close connections to the president shielded him - and the Border Patrol - from meddling by powerful political and corporate interests.
One of Swing's first decisive acts was to transfer certain entrenched immigration officials out of the border area to other regions of the country where their political connections with people such as Senator Johnson would have no effect.
Then on June 17, 1954, what was called "Operation Wetback" began. Because political resistance was lower in California and Arizona, the roundup of aliens began there. Some 750 agents swept northward through agricultural areas with a goal of 1,000 apprehensions a day. By the end of July, over 50,000 aliens were caught in the two states. Another 488,000, fearing arrest, had fled the country.
By mid-July, the crackdown extended northward into Utah, Nevada, and Idaho, and eastward to Texas.
By September, 80,000 had been taken into custody in Texas, and an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 illegals had left the Lone Star State voluntarily.
Unlike today, Mexicans caught in the roundup were not simply released at the border, where they could easily reenter the US. To discourage their return, Swing arranged for buses and trains to take many aliens deep within Mexico before being set free.
Tens of thousands more were put aboard two hired ships, the Emancipation and the Mercurio. The ships ferried the aliens from Port Isabel, Texas, to Vera Cruz, Mexico, more than 500 miles south.
The sea voyage was "a rough trip, and they did not like it," says Don Coppock, who worked his way up from Border Patrolman in 1941 to eventually head the Border Patrol from 1960 to 1973.
Mr. Coppock says he "cannot understand why [President] Bush let [today's] problem get away from him as it has. I guess it was his compassionate conservatism, and trying to please [Mexican President] Vincente Fox."
There are now said to be 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in the US. Of the Mexicans who live here, an estimated 85 percent are here illegally.
Nope. Have you seen any in domestic affairs in our party.
bttt
That's Right! And Good Night. :)
Apparently he was quoting a NYT article (even more surprising! :).
Despite Ike's politics, he was a different breed of American. Sadly we won't find any today in this politically correct country.
My guess: Bush is beholden to people who make tons of money off of this off-the radar labor. Home builders, etc.
As always, let the middle class bear the cost of these employers' profits.
I remember reading about this many years ago. The details are gone but the essence was this. Mexicans were starting to agitate for better wages...and were beginning to take better jobs outside of agriculture - lowering wages in those fields, too. Complaints from ranchers and others led Eisenhower to do what he did.
What the article doesn't describe is what happened almost immediately after the round-ups and deportation. A new bracero program was begun which brought in new Mexican labor - legally - at much reduced wages, and under much better control.
ping
Deport 'em all!
Ike did it, so can Bush!
LOL! Well-played.
Where there's a will, there's a way. With the current administration and Senate, there is no will, so their is no way.
From my vantage point, I see nothing the mexican illegals have done to promote this. I do see hollywood crap, inner city ghetto crap, and liberal caucasian politicians contribute to the creeping destruction, but the contributions by the mexicans have been minimal.
I am not laying the current social atmosphere solely at the feet of illegals, but they are one piece of the puzzle. The fact that they feel entitled to enter the country in violation of our immigration laws combined with the authorities lax enforcement of those laws is part of the creeping effect I referred to. The worst part is that everyone has become so feminized that no one dares to call the illegal activity what it is for fear that they will be labeled racist and xenophobic. And that attitude doesn't just hold for illegal immigration, but most of those things we, as a country, used to hold as wrong for the good of society. We are told there is no right or wrong any more, no black or white, only shades of gray. The boundaries of society are eroding and once the boundaries are gone, anarchy will reign.
The reason the racism charge is so effective is that the US has a long long history of being racist and even today there are a lot of racist tendencies. The US is one one of the least racist countries in the world, but it is far from color blind.
Black Slavery, Chinese exclusion laws, treatment of the Indians, banning negros from baseball and banning negroes from professional golf as late as 1990, U of Alabama never had a black football player until after 1974 when Bear Bryant said "Cunningham ran all over my skinny little white boys", U. of KY never had a black basketball player until 1976, 38 states banned black white marriages until 1964.
Yes they only make it more and more likely that some kind of integration between the two nations will happen. It will be an open border relationship and not a political merger if we are lucky. Then again youd probably be just fine with that. There arent many ghetto blacks or liberal whites in mexico, just mexicans, so why is mexico so corrupt and crime ridden right down to the lowest office and law enforcement officer?
[quote]The reason the racism charge is so effective is that the US has a long long history of being racist and even today there are a lot of racist tendencies. The US is one one of the least racist countries in the world, but it is far from color blind.
Black Slavery, Chinese exclusion laws, treatment of the Indians, banning negros from baseball and banning negroes from professional golf as late as 1990, U of Alabama never had a black football player until after 1974 when Bear Bryant said "Cunningham ran all over my skinny little white boys", U. of KY never had a black basketball player until 1976, 38 states banned black white marriages until 1964.[/quote]
You are being dishonest about the Alabama-UCS game, I believe Wilbur Jackson was on the team, he was not allowed to play as Freshmen weren't in those days. Oh, Coach Bryant beat Trojans 17-10 in 1971 when he installed the "Wishbone". The team was filled with "skinny white boys" I don't know if they were that skinny, you might want ask John Hannah, be careful if you ever phrase it that way. You have a very odd line of thinking to be on a conservative site, it sounds rather liberal and race-baiting the comments you're exposing.
Ok, I got my year wrong. It was 1970, not 1974.
Interesting is this:
"Yet African-Americans who played at Alabama in the 1970s offer glowing accounts of Bryant's fairness and character. Bryant negotiated to bring Southern California's integrated team to Birmingham in 1970, resulting in an Alabama thrashing led by African-American runner Sam "Bam" Cunningham. As Bryant later said, "Cunningham did more for integration in Alabama in 60 minutes than Martin Luther King Jr."
I happen to like the truth. The truth is the US has been one of the more fair and least racist counties in the world. The truth is the US does have a racist past. The truth is things are better now than ever. The truth is some percentage, my guess is about 10% of the US are white bigots or closet racists.
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