So. Much. Winning. Colombia's President Calls on Illegals to Return Home

Colombia's President Gustavo Petro has called on his fellow countrymen who are skulking in the United States to come home and help build their own country.

Petro has been feuding with Trump for what seems like years, but in reality has been only two weeks, and he appears to be giving up the fight. Not that he puts it that way. He thought he was the unstoppable force, but he discovered that Donald Trump is the immovable object which was as harmed by Petro's petulance as a windshield is by a mosquito hitting it at 70 mph.

No doubt some of these Colombians will return and become productive members of society, however difficult that is in Colombia. After all, there is a good reason why decent people left to go to the United States for a better life. Petro's socialist policies won't make it easy, but people can be resourceful.

But I suspect that the criminals who came to the United States will decline the generous offer, and the many people who came for the welfare benefits, free housing, and, of course, free health care will only leave if coerced to do so.

Still, this is a major victory for Trump, both in slapping down an opponent and in forcing countries to acknowledge implicitly that people left their countries because the opportunities at home were so scarce.

There are two major reasons, and many minor ones, why migrants come here: to escape what Trump calls s**thole countries and to prey on US citizens who were made vulnerable by Biden. Harsh law enforcement is the only approach that will work on the latter, and making staying at home more attractive than illegally entering the United States is the solution to the former.

Unfortunately, Petro is not likely to make Colombia a more attractive place to stay in the long run because he is a socialist. And long experience shows that US foreign aid has made little progress in helping Latin American countries become more prosperous and attractive to their citizens. A few countries are making progress--El Salvador is a great example--but many countries in the region are still a mess.

Illegal immigration to the US has been a safety valve for those regimes--export the malcontents and the poor and make them our problem. Trump is foreclosing that option.

The record up to now for deportation of aliens was during President Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback.

Mexico wanted to stop illegals in the US because it needed more workers in Mexico. “...like many other Mexican government officials, realized that the laborers leaving for the United States would be needed to industrialize and expand the Mexican economy. While Mexico did not have extensive capital, its largest asset was abundant, cheap labor, the primary resource needed to modernize the country’s economy and develop industrial agribusiness.”(pre-Eisenhower days).

In June, 1954 command teams of 12 Border Patrol agents, buses, planes, and temporary processing stations began locating, processing, and deporting Mexicans who had illegally entered the United States. A total of 750 immigration and border patrol officers and investigators; 300 jeeps, cars and buses; and seven airplanes were allocated for the operation.[34] Teams were focused on quick processing, as planes were able to coordinate with ground efforts and quickly deport people into Mexico.[35] Those deported were handed off to Mexican officials, who in turn moved them into central Mexico where there were many labor opportunities.[36] While the operation included the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, its main targets were border areas in Texas and California.[35]

Overall, there were 1,074,277 “returns”, defined as “confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable alien out of the United States not based on an order of removal” in the first year of Operation Wetback. This included many workers without papers who fled to Mexico fearing arrest; over half a million from Texas alone.] The total number of sweeps fell to just 242,608 in 1955, and continuously declined each year until 1962, when there was a slight rise in apprehended workers. Despite the decline in sweeps, the total number of Border Patrol agents more than doubled to 1,692 by 1962, and an additional plane was added to the force.
Wikipedia.

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