Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954 (Contributions in Ethnic Studies) by Juan Ramon Garcia

Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954 (Contributions in Ethnic Studies) Reviews

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  sdw

  
  This book is the first monograph produced on “Operation Wetback” the United States’ mass removal in 1954 of undocumented Mexican workers. The first half of the book examines the Bracero Program, including the forces for and against the program in both the Untied States and Mexico. Considerable attention is given to comparing and contrasting the political machinations in U.S. and Mexico both in the development of the program and then in the negotiations of the program. The major thesis here is that the U.S. is dominated by “special interests” (like large growers) and Mexico is dominated by the pressures and power available within political parties, mostly the dominant PRI. The author contends that those opposed to the bracero program within the United States tended to blame the braceros and undocumented workers for many of social ills facing American society. Because those for the bracero program tended to focus on their own economic profit, none of the political players in the U.S. actually cared about the wellbeing of the braceros and undocumented laborers, and all sides tended to dehumanize these workers. One chapter sketches out a brief history of the Border Patrol from its founding in 1924 focused on Asian immigration, to debates over its funding and functionality during the 1940s and 1950s. Again, the author depicts the Border Patrol as dominated by outside pressure groups allowing it to sometimes enforce U.S. immigration law and sometimes subvert it, depending on the needs of the local economic elite.
  
  It is important to remember that this is a book that ends in discussion of the current policy proposals put forth by President Carter. This is to say, the book was probably conceived only shortly before me. It is not a social history, and while the author does include some information about braceros, their agency, and the human rights abuses they faced, it is most of all a book about government policy and how and why government policy was developed. If you don’t really care about the arguments that went into creating policies (or developing legislation that never passed) then some of the details in the middle chapters may bore you. Yet this book ultimately provides an important historical perspective on the racist and fucked up immigration polices we have today. For example, as “operation wetback” went into effect, the government considered a bill that would provide penalties for employers who knowingly hired undocumented labor. The bill was very weak and actually designed to prevent any employer from actual punishment. Yet even this weak bill did not pass even as the exploits of the border patrol and supposed success of “Operation Wetback” was celebrated. I certainly don’t agree that the United States’ current crisis around undocumented workers would be “solved” by employer penalties (rather than worker amnesty guaranteeing human rights, worker rights and paths towards citizenship in the short term and in the long term a revolution that would get rid of the borders, capitalism and “free trade”) . However, I think the dynamics discussed here eerily mirror the dynamics around say, the ICE Raid in New Bedford last spring, where the labor violations of the employers were used to publicly justify the inhumane deportations of workers, while the employers themselves never faced any penalties for either their employment of undocumented workers, or more importantly their violation of labor laws around fair working conditions.
  
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  Lianna

  oh my.
  
  From wikipedia -
  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.