Free Republic

With a little under a month remaining until Election Day, the Obama campaign has transitioned into full-blown hispandering mode. This week’s symbolically potent, yet empty, exercise in gestural politics entailed President Obama designating the home of former California labor leader Cesar Chavez a national monument. The ostensible purpose of this decision is to rally support among one of his party’s most reliable voting blocs, i.e. Hispanic Americans. Because even though they still decisively support the President’s reelection, that support does not always translate into votes, as other analysts have trenchantly observed. What makes Obama’s trip to California so fascinating though...

Antonio Nuño Gonzalez stood in line in Mexico and waited for his papers to come to the United States. Eventually he was packed into a cattle car with other men for the trip north. After crossing the border, he was sprayed with DDT and stripped naked for a physical examination so thorough he's still making ribald jokes about it more than 50 years later. It was all worth it for the chance to do back-breaking work — picking cotton, strawberries, lettuce and other California crops, from the desert heat of Brawley to the verdant coastal valley of Watsonville. His American...

They say Senate bill needs assurances on living conditions, pay Picking beets, cherries and cotton and shoveling manure on farms across the United States as a Mexican guest worker in the 1940s and 1950s, Cecilio Santillana was glad to earn a few dollars a day. He didn't complain about living in horse stalls without bathrooms or doing stoop work for 12 hours a day without breaks for fear he would be sent back to Chihuahua and lose the steady work that allowed him to support his family in Mexico. But the 78-year-old San Jose man opposes a temporary worker proposal...

WASHINGTON – Massive demonstrations nationwide have helped propel legislation to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants. But immigration experts and critics caution that the legislation, if enacted, could generate a legacy of unintended consequences. Senate legislation would double legal immigration, legalize millions currently in the country illegally and open the border every year to hundreds of thousands of “guest workers.” The Senate debated the legislation in March and April but failed to complete action before going on a recess. The House approved enforcement-only legislation in December that would make unlawful presence in the country a felony, boost efforts to stop illegal...

Apr 22, 2006, 11:44 pm SAN LUIS, Ariz. — Decades ago, if a Mexican wanted to go to work in the United States, there were no long treks beneath the desert sun, no "coyotes" to smuggle people across the border and no immigrants dying along the way. All they had to do was jump on the next train headed north, register with a contractor, be sprayed with pesticides, and they were in. That's what Miguel Sander did. "Nobody had to cross the desert in my time," he said. Now retired and living in San Luis, Sander was one of about...

Economist Philip Martin of the University of California likes to tell a story about the state's tomato industry. In the early 1960s, growers relied on seasonal Mexican laborers, brought in under the government's "bracero" program. The Mexicans picked the tomatoes that were then processed into ketchup and other products. In 1964 Congress killed the program despite growers' warnings that its abolition would doom their industry. What happened? Well, plant scientists developed oblong tomatoes that could be harvested by machine. Since then, California's tomato output has risen fivefold. It's a story worth remembering, because we're being warned again that we need...

Operation Wetback was a repatriation project of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service to remove illegal Mexican immigrants ("wetbacks") from the Southwest. During the first decades of the twentieth century, the majority of migrant workers who crossed the border illegally did not have adequate protection against exploitation by American farmers. As a result of the Good Neighbor Policy, Mexico and the United States began negotiating an accord to protect the rights of Mexican agricultural workers. Continuing discussions and modifications of the agreement were so successful that the Congress chose to formalize the "temporary" program into the Bracero program,qv authorized...

Globalists Destroying America Diane Alden Saturday, Jan. 10, 2004 In the next century, nations as we know [them] will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn't such a great idea after all. – Strobe Talbot, President Clinton's deputy secretary of state, as quoted in Time, July 20, l992 The Washington Post reported on Dec. 19, 2003: "Lobbyists working with the White House said Bush is developing a plan that would allow immigrants to cross the border legally if jobs are waiting for them. The sources said the administration also wants to provide a way...