Trump's Model Deportation Program-Operation Wetback
Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2015 7:52 am
Mr. Trump, who has stirred up so much enthusiasm for mass deportations, is now offering what he evidently regards as an exemplary template: the far more modest but still massively cruel round-’em-up-and-throw-’em-out program carried out, mainly in the summer of 1954, under the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In fact, his view is grotesquely ahistorical. The deportations in 1954 probably didn’t amount to more than a few hundred thousand, though Mr. Trump said they “moved 1.5 million illegal immigrants out of this country.” Even his wildly exaggerated figure is a fraction of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants now in the United States, who have much deeper roots, and live in communities far more geographically scattered, than their mid-century counterparts.
Moreover, the deportations in the 1950s took place with the active collaboration of the Mexican government, which wanted to repatriate a major supply of cheap labor that had migrated north. It is Trumpian fantasy run amok to imagine that Mexican authorities today would be so cooperative in an undertaking that would be seen as inhumane and, given the importance of remittances, economically disadvantageous.
Perhaps most salient, Operation Wetback was a disgraceful episode that involved inhumane treatment of Mexican migrants, an unknown number of whom died or were sickened by being forcibly relocated and in many cases deposited in sweltering, remote locations with little food or water. One observer depicted “indescribable scenes of human misery and tragedy.” A historian compared the forced journeys to that of an 18th-century slave ship.
What little sense entered the GOP debate on this issue came from Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who called advocacy of mass deportations “silly” and juvenile, and former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who put his finger on the problem precisely. “It’s not embracing American values,” Mr. Bush said. “And it would tear communities apart, and it would send a signal that we’re not the kind of country that I know America is.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-inspiration-for-mr-trumps-immigration-policy-is-an-inhumane-plan-from-the-1950s/2015/11/11/61a8628e-88bd-11e5-be39-0034bb576eee_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
In fact, his view is grotesquely ahistorical. The deportations in 1954 probably didn’t amount to more than a few hundred thousand, though Mr. Trump said they “moved 1.5 million illegal immigrants out of this country.” Even his wildly exaggerated figure is a fraction of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants now in the United States, who have much deeper roots, and live in communities far more geographically scattered, than their mid-century counterparts.
Moreover, the deportations in the 1950s took place with the active collaboration of the Mexican government, which wanted to repatriate a major supply of cheap labor that had migrated north. It is Trumpian fantasy run amok to imagine that Mexican authorities today would be so cooperative in an undertaking that would be seen as inhumane and, given the importance of remittances, economically disadvantageous.
Perhaps most salient, Operation Wetback was a disgraceful episode that involved inhumane treatment of Mexican migrants, an unknown number of whom died or were sickened by being forcibly relocated and in many cases deposited in sweltering, remote locations with little food or water. One observer depicted “indescribable scenes of human misery and tragedy.” A historian compared the forced journeys to that of an 18th-century slave ship.
What little sense entered the GOP debate on this issue came from Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who called advocacy of mass deportations “silly” and juvenile, and former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who put his finger on the problem precisely. “It’s not embracing American values,” Mr. Bush said. “And it would tear communities apart, and it would send a signal that we’re not the kind of country that I know America is.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-inspiration-for-mr-trumps-immigration-policy-is-an-inhumane-plan-from-the-1950s/2015/11/11/61a8628e-88bd-11e5-be39-0034bb576eee_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
--- many times on this board i have extolled the virtues of owning a portion of gold , silver . Sure , i work in the obvious current economy same as most everyone else . Thread is about immigration and specifically TRUMPS advertised immigration policy !!