State Out of the Union by Jeff Biggers

Author:Jeff Biggers [Biggers, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781568587042
Publisher: Nation Books

A year later, of course, the Chinese Exclusion Acts passed through Congress, effectively outlawing migration from that country. A huge ocean notwithstanding, the Review wondered, Why can’t we carry out such a definitive policy with Mexicans?

Swing would have agreed with such a sweeping approach. Placing Mexican barrios “under a state of siege,” he unleashed his campaign with the fervor of ending migration from Mexico forever. However, his roundup or forced repatriation of more than 1 million Mexican immigrants was as effective as the illusory attempt to capture Pancho Villa: a lot of military show that delayed the inevitable. Villa became a hero; deported Mexicans would pack up their belongings and return to the US.

Hernandez concluded, “Instead of being a major law enforcement campaign, the summer of 1954 can better be understood as a massive publicity campaign for what had happened the year before and a public claiming of migration control by the U. S. government despite the critical contributions and participation of the Mexican government.”

“The so-called wetback problem no longer exists,” Swing insisted in 1954. “The border has been secured.”

More than fifty years later, the defiant Pearce floated this same banner in 2006, telling anyone who would listen that Operation Wetback was “a successful program for those who continue to tell you it’s impossible to deport [illegal immigrants] in this country.”

Arizonans would eventually listen to Pearce. Like the Californians’ dalliance with their own private Chinese exclusion acts, SB 1070 challenged the nation with its attack on federal jurisdiction.

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