Three Presidents, Three Common Approaches

By Semperpapa via Chris Lewis

Today I received this e-mail from a gentleman I work with. The information I found to be of interest and asked Chris for the permission to post it.

What did Hoover, Truman, and Eisenhower have in common?
Back during The great Depression, President Herbert Hoover ordered the deportation of ALL illegal aliens in order to make jobs available to American citizens who desperately needed to work.
Harry Truman deported over two million Illegal’s after WWII to create jobs for returning veterans.
In 1954. President Dwight Eisenhower deported 13 million Mexican Nationals!

The program was called 'Operation Wetback.' It was done so WWII and Korean Veterans would have a better chance at jobs. It took 2 years, but they deported them!

Now... if they could deport the illegal’s back then - they could sure do it today. If you have doubts about the veracity of this information, enter Operation Wetback into your favorite search engine and confirm it for yourself.

http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=11145

It's true, Eisenhower did it!
Burgeoning numbers of illegal Mexican immigrants prompted President Dwight D. Eisenhower to appoint his longtime friends, John Cox and General Joseph Swing, as INS Commissioner. According to Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr., Eisenhower had a sense of urgency about illegal immigration upon taking office. In a letter to Sen. J. William Fulbright, Eisenhower quoted a report in The New York Times that said, "The rise in illegal border-crossing by Mexican 'wetbacks' (rooted from the watery route taken by the Mexican immigrants across the Rio Grande) to a current rate of more than 1,000,000 cases a year has been accompanied by a curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to the highest levels of the Federal Government."

The operation was modeled after a program that came to be termed the Mexican Repatriation, which put pressure on citizens of Mexico to return home during the Great Depression, due to the economic crisis in the United States.
Operation Wetback in action:
The effort began in California and Arizona, and coordinated 1075 Border Patrol agents, along with state and local police agencies, to mount an aggressive crackdown. Tactics employed included going as far as systematic police sweeps of Mexican-American neighborhoods, and random stops and ID checks of "Mexican-looking" people in a region with many Native Americans and native Hispanics. In some cases, illegal immigrants were deported along with their American-born minor dependent children as is standard international practice. This occurred despite the fact the children were, by current legal interpretation of the 14th amendment, citizens of the United States. Some 750 agents targeted agricultural areas with a goal of 1000 apprehensions per day. By the end of July, over 50,000 immigrants were caught in the two states. An estimated 488,000 illegal immigrants are claimed to have left voluntarily, for fear of being apprehended. By September, 80,000 had been taken into custody in Texas, and the INS estimates that 500,000 to 700,000 had left Texas of their accord. To discourage illicit re-entry, buses and trains took many deportees deep within Mexican territory, prior to releasing them. Tens of thousands more were deported by two chartered ships, the Emancipation and the Mercurio. The ships ferried them from Port Isabel, Texas, to Veracruz, Mexico, more than 500 miles (800 kilometers) to the south. Some were taken as far as 1,000 miles. Deportation by sea was ended after seven deportees jumped overboard from the Mercurio and drowned, provoking a mutiny which led to a public outcry in Mexico.

It is obvious that the problem of illegal immigration has been one that our Nation has been pressed to address for some time. The part I found most interesting was the data regarding the estimated hundreds of thousands of illegals that voluntarily left the country for fear of being discovered by the Federal authorities. Guess there was a time when punishment was a deterrent.

It is clear that the problem since then has grown exponentially, mostly due to the complete inefficiency of the government to secure the border. or maybe it was not inefficiency, but just a way for the politicians to obtain political gain. And the hell with the law.

Thank you Chris Lewis for the information.