🚀 go-pugleaf

In the mid 50's the USA had a problem as we do today with massive
numbers of latin illegal aliens running over our southern border.  The
federal government of that day decided to respond by developing
Operation Wetback, a campaign to force illegals out of the country and
the establishment of fines for those who hired them.  It was a success
and its something we need to consider today.


Full article is here:
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/print/OO/pqo1.html




The Handbook of Texas Online


OPERATION WETBACK.

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 by Public Law 78. In the early 1940s, while the program was
being viewed as a success in both countries, Mexico excluded Texas from
the labor-exchange program on the grounds of widespread violation of
contracts, discrimination against migrant workers, and such violations
of their civil rights as perfunctory arrests for petty causes.
Oblivious to the Mexican charges, some grower organizations in Texas
continued to hire illegal Mexican workers and violate such mandates of
PL 78 as the requirement to provide workers transportation costs from
and to Mexico, fair and lawful wages, housing, and health services.
World War IIqv and the postwar period exacerbated the Mexican exodus to
the United States, as the demand for cheap agricultural laborers
increased. Graft and corruption on both sides of the border enriched
many Mexican officials as well as unethical "coyote" freelancers in the
United States who promised contracts in Texas for the unsuspecting
Bracero. Studies conducted over a period of several years indicate that
the Bracero program increased the number of illegal aliens in Texas and
the rest of the country. Because of the low wages paid to legal,
contracted braceros, many of them skipped out on their contracts either
to return home or to work elsewhere for better wages as wetbacks.

Increasing grievances from various Mexican officials in the United
States and Mexico prompted the Mexican government to rescind the
bracero agreement and cease the export of Mexican workers. The United
States Immigration Service, under pressure from various agricultural
groups, retaliated against Mexico in 1951 by allowing thousands of
illegals to cross the border, arresting them, and turning them over to
the Texas Employment Commission,qv which delivered them to work for
various grower groups in Texas and elsewhere. Over the long term, this
action by the federal government, in violation of immigration laws and
the agreement with Mexico, caused new problems for Texas. Between 1944
and 1954, "the decade of the wetback," the number of illegal aliens
coming from Mexico increased by 6,000 percent. It is estimated that in
1954 before Operation Wetback got under way, more than a million
workers had crossed the Rio Grande illegally. Cheap labor displaced
native agricultural workers, and increased violation of labor laws and
discrimination encouraged criminality, disease, and illiteracy.
According to a study conducted in 1950 by the President's Commission on
Migratory Labor in Texas, the Rio Grande valleyqv cotton growers were
paying approximately half of the wages paid elsewhere in Texas. In 1953
a McAllen newspaper clamored for justice in view of continuing criminal
activities by wetbacks.