Was President Eisenhower a Nazi for Deporting Illegal Aliens?
There were 3 million illegals in the country, Ike dealt with it via mass deportation, the plan was called "Operation Wetback." Can you imagine anything more politically incorrect?
The Republican Party has been the party of mass deportation since 1954
August 22, 2015
Daniel Greenfield
In other news, the GOP establishment still hasn't figured out how to take on Trump except through fluttering outrage of the, "I can't believe this... can you... this is unacceptable" variety. Accompanied by heavy doses of historical amnesia.
A case in point.
Will the Party of Lincoln Become the Party of Mass Deportation
It has come to this: The GOP, formerly the party of Lincoln and ostensibly the party of liberty and limited government, is being defined by clamors for a mass roundup and deportation of millions of human beings. To will an end is to will the means for the end, so the Republican clamors are also for the requisite expansion of government’s size and coercive powers.
The Republican Party was also the Party of Eisenhower. The Republican Party has been the party of mass deportation since 1954. Millions of illegal aliens were deported without a massive expansion of government. Furthermore border control and deporting illegal aliens is fully within the realm of the legitimate powers of the Federal government.
Arguing about the "requisite expansion of government’s size and coercive powers" in response to immigration enforcement is as bizarre as arguing about it for the military. You can expect a liberal to make that kind of constitutionally illiterate talking point, but it's not a conservative position.
Will wrings his hands over the terrible idea of deporting people who are in this country illegally. But this is exactly why so many Republicans embrace Trump, even though his credibility is highly questionable on immigration. Too much of the establishment is showing its true face by completely rejecting their views and their pain. George Will bleeds for illegals, but seems not to care very much for the Americans victimized by illegal migration.
Instead Will gets right down to disgusting Holocaust comparisons.
The big costs, in decades and dollars (hundreds of billions), of Trump’s project could be reduced if, say, the targets were required to sew yellow patches on their clothing to advertise their coming expulsion. There is precedent.
As I asked before, what exactly is the difference between nasty stuff like this and the sort of argument you would get from a liberal? George Will casually compares deporting illegal aliens to Nazi Germany. Therefore isn't America, Nazi for deporting illegal aliens now?
This is exactly why so many Republicans have lost faith in a party whose elites think and talk like liberals.
Let's get back to the Nazi regime of Eisenhower.
General Eisenhower...quoted a report in The New York Times, highlighting one paragraph that said: "The rise in illegal border-crossing by Mexican 'wetbacks' 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."
Years later, the late Herbert Brownell Jr., Eisenhower's first attorney general, said in an interview with this writer that the president had a sense of urgency about illegal immigration when he took office.
America "was faced with a breakdown in law enforcement on a very large scale," Mr. Brownell said. "When I say large scale, I mean hundreds of thousands were coming in from Mexico [every year] without restraint."
Although an on-and-off guest-worker program for Mexicans was operating at the time, farmers and ranchers in the Southwest had become dependent on an additional low-cost, docile, illegal labor force of up to 3 million, mostly Mexican, laborers...
Profits from illegal labor led to the kind of corruption that apparently worried Eisenhower. Joseph White, a retired 21-year veteran of the Border Patrol, says that in the early 1950s, some senior US officials overseeing immigration enforcement "had friends among the ranchers," and agents "did not dare" arrest their illegal workers.
Walt Edwards, who joined the Border Patrol in 1951, tells a similar story. He says: "When we caught illegal aliens on farms and ranches, the farmer or rancher would often call and complain [to officials in El Paso]. And depending on how politically connected they were, there would be political intervention. That is how we got into this mess we are in now."...
During the 1950s, however, this "Good Old Boy" system changed under Eisenhower – if only for about 10 years.
In 1954, Ike appointed retired Gen. Joseph "Jumpin' Joe" Swing, a former West Point classmate and veteran of the 101st Airborne, as the new INS commissioner.
Influential politicians, including Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D) of Texas and Sen. Pat McCarran (D) of Nevada, favored open borders, and were dead set against strong border enforcement, Brownell said. But General Swing's close connections to the president shielded him – and the Border Patrol – from meddling by powerful political and corporate interests....
Then on June 17, 1954, what was called "Operation Wetback" began. Because political resistance was lower in California and Arizona, the roundup of aliens began there. Some 750 agents swept northward through agricultural areas with a goal of 1,000 apprehensions a day. By the end of July, over 50,000 aliens were caught in the two states. Another 488,000, fearing arrest, had fled the country.
By mid-July, the crackdown extended northward into Utah, Nevada, and Idaho, and eastward to Texas.
By September, 80,000 had been taken into custody in Texas, and an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 illegals had left the Lone Star State voluntarily.
Unlike today, Mexicans caught in the roundup were not simply released at the border, where they could easily reenter the US. To discourage their return, Swing arranged for buses and trains to take many aliens deep within Mexico before being set free.
Tens of thousands more were put aboard two hired ships, the Emancipation and the Mercurio. The ships ferried the aliens from Port Isabel, Texas, to Vera Cruz, Mexico, more than 500 miles south.
Does George Will think Eisenhower was Hitler? Does he believe that Operation Wetback tainted the Republican Party?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/259880/was-president-eisenhower-nazi-deporting-illegal-daniel-greenfield |
