History really does repeat itself
The 34th president Dwight Eisenhower will always be known for his sweep of thousands of illegal migrants. In 1953, there was a significant border crisis. Over 3 million illegal migrants (mostly Mexican) had come through the southern border of Arizona, California and Texas (sound familiar?). With only about 1,000 border patrol officers, Eisenhower initiated an operation that would stop the illegal traffic–a historical measure. By the summer of 1954 over a million illegal Mexican migrants were deported in a short amount of time. This was called “Operation Wetback”. The term “wetback” used during this operation, has been viewed as a racist and derogatory term. The use of this term referred to the migrants coming through the river when crossing the border, thereby getting wet. I would never condone the use of racial slurs, but simply wanted to explain how it came about. Nonetheless, what is clear is that the issue of millions of people crossing America’s “open” borders has been nothing new since the 1950’s when these invasions first began.
If you have an interest in doing your own research about immigration history in the United States, here are a few resources:
Ronald Bayor, ed., The Oxford Handbook of American Immigration and Ethnicity (Oxford University Press, 2016)
Richard Bellamy, Citizenship: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2013)
Deborah Cohen, Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Postwar United States and Mexico (University of North Carolina Press, 2011)
Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American life (Harper Perennial, 2002)