Posted on 07/10/2006 7:34:25 AM PDT by SJackson
GEORGE W. BUSH isn't the first Republican president to face a full-blown immigration crisis on the U.S.-Mexican border.
Fifty-three years ago, when newly elected President 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.
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.
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," Brownell said. "When I say large scale, I mean hundreds of thousands were coming in from Mexico [every year] without restraint."
Agricultural dependency
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 U.S. 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 U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 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.
Political resistance
Influential politicians, including Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, D-Texas, and Sen. Pat McCarran, D-Nev., favored open borders, and were dead set against strong border enforcement, Brownell said. But 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 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, 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 United States. 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.
Pleasing neighbor
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 United States. Of the Mexicans who live here, an estimated 85 percent are here illegally.
Swing's fast-moving campaign soon secured America's borders -- an accomplishment no other president has since equaled. Illegal migration had dropped 95 percent by the late 1950s.
Several retired Border Patrol agents who took part in the 1950s effort say much of what Swing did could be repeated today.
"Some say we cannot send 12 million illegals now in the United States back where they came from. Of course we can!" says Walt Edwards, a former border agent who took part in Swing's campaign.
Donald Coppock, who headed the patrol from 1960 to 1973, says that if Swing and Ike were still running immigration enforcement, "they'd be on top of this in a minute."
William Chambers, another '50s veteran, agrees. "They could do a pretty good job" sealing the border.
Edwards says: "When we start enforcing the law, these various businesses are, on their own, going to replace their [illegal] workforce with a legal workforce."
Who cares? How are they going to stop us?
"To discourage their return, Swing arranged for buses and trains to take many aliens deep within Mexico before being set free. "
Catapults.
Hey. You're right.
I like that.
Roundups are not going to happen. They're way too politically explosive and most Americans are opposed to them anyway.
Non-starter.
good read
Thanks for the cross reference :)
Another one:;^)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1661011/posts
1. Before 1965, there was no quota limiting immigration from Mexico; why did Mexicans need to get their backs wet, literally or figuratively? I've been wondering about this for some time.
2. How did the INS identify, let alone physically catch, 50,000 illegal aliens in 45 days (June 17 to end of July)? I can see only two possibilities: either they already had lists of the illegals, with their addresses, or they "apprehended" people who looked and sounded Mexican, without regard to citizenship or immigration status.
3. How did the INS agents, on the average, arrest more than their own number each day and keep this up for months? Is this even physically possible? It could not have been possible by any stretch if the arrested had been in any way disposed to resist.
4. How could the United States government help but set the aliens free the moment they crossed the border? Only by persuading the Mexican government to detain them. Indeed, that would not happen today; I'm amazed that it happened then.
5. How did the government determine the number of illegals who fled the country fearing arrest? All right, this is a rhetorical question.
So you like the trebuchette idea?
While someone is cooking up a dose of vociferous OBL invective for me I wanted to thank you for quoting dear departed Travis'most important message: Article IV Section 4 is their duty, not an option.
This was posted last year, but it deserves repeating. I love Ike’s idea to put the illegals on ships and send them hundreds of miles to the south of Mexico, so they can’t just turn around and jump the border again.
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