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How President Eisenhower Dealt With America’s First Illegal Immigrant Crisis

chuckiechan

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How President Eisenhower Sent 3 Million Illegals Packing

This is not the first time the US has dealt with an illegal immigration problem. Only last time it was dealt with in a decidedly swifter and sterner manner. The response, coordinated by President Dwight Eisenhower, resulted in nearly 3 million illegal immigrants being sent home.

During his administration, Eisenhower became the first American president forced to deal with problems stemming from illegal immigration.

Today, this person would be ostracised and a target of violence. How things have changed.
 
He also built the socialist interstate highway system. He should have just given that money to the top 0.1 percent and waited for it to grow itself magically.
 
He also built the socialist interstate highway system. He should have just given that money to the top 0.1 percent and waited for it to grow itself magically.

There's nothing "socialist" about building roads. It's something that governments have done since there were roads, which predates socialism by millennia.

It's even a power granted by the Constituton.
 
There's nothing "socialist" about building roads. It's something that governments have done since there were roads, which predates socialism by millennia.

So who are paying for the roads?
 
So who are paying for the roads?

Ah, I see you subscribe to the asinine idea that anything the government spends money on is "socialism."
 
Ah, I see you subscribe to the asinine idea that anything the government spends money on is "socialism."

Where does the government get their money from?
 
Where does the government get their money from?

So, you're doubling down on the asinine idea that anything the government spends money on is "socialism."

I will leave you to continue on your own.
 
So, you're doubling down on the asinine idea that anything the government spends money on is "socialism."

I will leave you to continue on your own.

What else do you call it? Capitalism?
 
How President Eisenhower Sent 3 Million Illegals Packing

Today, this person would be ostracised and a target of violence. How things have changed.

This is what you need to know about how Eisenhower looked at this, and right from the article...

"In June of 1954, he appointed retired General Joseph “Jumpin’ Joe” Swing to head “Operation Wetback,” which sent local and federal officials on sweeps of Mexican neighborhoods looking for illegals.

... let that title for the program sink in, and then consider how appealing it would be to Trump and his supporters to see it come back.

It was a target of violence, separated families, rounded up both illegal and legal immigrants causing a nightmare for immigration officials, shipped them to unknown locations throughout Mexico not necessarily anywhere near where they came from, plenty died during the trip back and in holding here, resulted in thousands of complaints and push back, Congress at the time objected to the tenet of going after employers of illegal immigrants so plenty came right back, and ultimately the whole thing was abandoned and later debated on effectiveness.

All of that should sound familiar.

The original vision for this was not all Eisenhower, but rather Truman who used illegal immigrants as a scapegoat for why wages went stagnant by the early 1950's. Eisenhower placing the whole thing under Swing resulted in all sorts of controversy, and awkward testimony by Swing before Congress at the time. Including his want for a "little Mexican girl" to get here by "any means possible" because it was "hard to get a maid in Washington!" But he was impressed with the numbers of illegal immigrants that could become maids in... wait for it... El Paso (one of his trips.)

Trump actually praised Operation Wetback towards the end of 2015, during the Republican Debates. Going so far as to say, "Who couldn’t like his policies?" (referring to Eisenhower.)

There are plenty of reasons as to why Operation Wetback resonates with today's Republicans. The thinking behind it is similar, the nature of the plan is what Trump is going for today including championing loss of life, the derogatory name of the plan would be applauded by just about every racist group out there, and ultimately it will be the same stain on this nation's history from today as Operation Wetback was back then.

Congrats...
 
There's nothing "socialist" about building roads. It's something that governments have done since there were roads, which predates socialism by millennia.

It's even a power granted by the Constituton.

i'm well aware that it isn't socialism. however, i can only imagine the cries of rage from the current right wing movement if a Democratic president proposed a similar infrastructure program.

since we're having a this & that about how great Eisenhower was, what say we return to a 91% top marginal tax rate and ~35% union membership? while i think that top rate's a bit too high, i suppose that i could be convinced to consider it.
 
There's nothing "socialist" about building roads. It's something that governments have done since there were roads, which predates socialism by millennia.

It's even a power granted by the Constituton.

Doesn't change the fact that it is "treated as socialism" when certain parties are in power.
 
i'm well aware that it isn't socialism. however, i can only imagine the cries of rage from the current right wing movement if a Democratic president proposed a similar infrastructure program.

since we're having a this & that about how great Eisenhower was, what say we return to a 91% top marginal tax rate and ~35% union membership? while i think that top rate's a bit too high, i suppose that i could be convinced to consider it.

Doesn't change the fact that it is "treated as socialism" when certain parties are in power.

When has roadbuilding or infrastructure spending ever been "treated as socialism" by anyone?

Cite examples. (Note: if you're going to try to spin any arguments for privatization into "treating it as socialism," then you, too, are arguing that any government spending is "socialism." One need not be arguing that something is "socialism" in order to say it should be privatized.)
 
since we're having a this & that about how great Eisenhower was, what say we return to a 91% top marginal tax rate and ~35% union membership? while i think that top rate's a bit too high, i suppose that i could be convinced to consider it.

Would you like a total revert to the Eisenhower era? Seems like you'd be giving up quite a lot for that tax rate and level of union membership.
 
When has roadbuilding or infrastructure spending ever been "treated as socialism" by anyone?

Cite examples. (Note: if you're going to try to spin any arguments for privatization into "treating it as socialism," then you, too, are arguing that any government spending is "socialism." One need not be arguing that something is "socialism" in order to say it should be privatized.)

It might take awhile to find specifics on ROADBUILDING.
I'd have to bury myself nose deep in either online newspaper archives or microfiche records, I'm guessing.
However, Eisenhower himself, and his policies, being derided as socialism is nothing new.

A brief, 90-year history of Republicans calling Democrats ‘socialists’ – ThinkProgress

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XDFX6JB/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Who said "creeping" socialism? | Library of Congress

The Birchers even dubbed him a communist agent.
 
It might take awhile to find specifics on ROADBUILDING.
I'd have to bury myself nose deep in either online newspaper archives or microfiche records, I'm guessing.
However, Eisenhower himself, and his policies, being derided as socialism is nothing new.

A brief, 90-year history of Republicans calling Democrats ‘socialists’ – ThinkProgress

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XDFX6JB/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Who said "creeping" socialism? | Library of Congress

The Birchers even dubbed him a communist agent.

Well, I asked about roadbuilding, which was the subject.
 
This is what you need to know about how Eisenhower looked at this, and right from the article...

"In June of 1954, he appointed retired General Joseph “Jumpin’ Joe” Swing to head “Operation Wetback,” which sent local and federal officials on sweeps of Mexican neighborhoods looking for illegals.

... let that title for the program sink in, and then consider how appealing it would be to Trump and his supporters to see it come back.

It was a target of violence, separated families, rounded up both illegal and legal immigrants causing a nightmare for immigration officials, shipped them to unknown locations throughout Mexico not necessarily anywhere near where they came from, plenty died during the trip back and in holding here, resulted in thousands of complaints and push back, Congress at the time objected to the tenet of going after employers of illegal immigrants so plenty came right back, and ultimately the whole thing was abandoned and later debated on effectiveness.

All of that should sound familiar.

The original vision for this was not all Eisenhower, but rather Truman who used illegal immigrants as a scapegoat for why wages went stagnant by the early 1950's. Eisenhower placing the whole thing under Swing resulted in all sorts of controversy, and awkward testimony by Swing before Congress at the time. Including his want for a "little Mexican girl" to get here by "any means possible" because it was "hard to get a maid in Washington!" But he was impressed with the numbers of illegal immigrants that could become maids in... wait for it... El Paso (one of his trips.)

Trump actually praised Operation Wetback towards the end of 2015, during the Republican Debates. Going so far as to say, "Who couldn’t like his policies?" (referring to Eisenhower.)

There are plenty of reasons as to why Operation Wetback resonates with today's Republicans. The thinking behind it is similar, the nature of the plan is what Trump is going for today including championing loss of life, the derogatory name of the plan would be applauded by just about every racist group out there, and ultimately it will be the same stain on this nation's history from today as Operation Wetback was back then.

Congrats...

All of that effort just to blame republicans for deportation in the ‘60’s?

Its hardly a stain, since hardly anyone knows about it. Its not even in high school text books.
 
Well, I asked about roadbuilding, which was the subject.

I know you did, I see that.
I started looking and ran across a lot of newspaper archive sites with paywalls and I wasn't interested in joining three different newspaper archive sites just to get a chance to deep dive their articles.

Actually the subject of the thread is how Ike treated the illegals. It branched off into everything else.
 
I know you did, I see that.
I started looking and ran across a lot of newspaper archive sites with paywalls and I wasn't interested in joining three different newspaper archive sites just to get a chance to deep dive their articles.

Actually the subject of the thread is how Ike treated the illegals. It branched off into everything else.

Sure, it's the topic of the thread, but not the subject of the post you responded to.
 
All of that effort just to blame republicans for deportation in the ‘60’s?

Its hardly a stain, since hardly anyone knows about it. Its not even in high school text books.

Hardly in who's textbooks, the ones controlled by Texas?


Hardly fair to hang all of this on Ike. Operation Wetback was a terrible humanitarian crisis but our immigration policy has sounded like Mommie Dearest for better than a hundred years or more.

Ike's policies were just a continuation and maybe an expansion of the preceding fickle manifestations of previous decades where first we needed Mexican labor, then derided it as an attack or an invasion. The reason Mexicans think our immigration laws are a joke is because they change drastically on a whim every couple of years.
 
i'm well aware that it isn't socialism. however, i can only imagine the cries of rage from the current right wing movement if a Democratic president proposed a similar infrastructure program.

since we're having a this & that about how great Eisenhower was, what say we return to a 91% top marginal tax rate and ~35% union membership? while i think that top rate's a bit too high, i suppose that i could be convinced to consider it.

The 91% tax rate was a "marginal tax rate" which meant that the 91% rate only applied to those dollars which landed outside of the "margins".
In other words, if you made 401,000 last year, only the last thousand would be taxed at that marginal tax rate of 91% because everything UP TO the first four hundred thousand was taxed at a much lower rate.

And we're not even taking deductions into account, which is important because in that era, deductions were everything. The high marginal tax rate was part of a larger package that also offered generous deductions if you plowed your money into anything that worked out as reinvestment.

Almost no one actually paid the full 91% because the point was to incentivize doing something other than hoarding cash.
 
All of that effort just to blame republicans for deportation in the ‘60’s?

Its hardly a stain, since hardly anyone knows about it. Its not even in high school text books.

It is hardly effort to know and discuss history, even with those a little less knowing of it. And since you went there I blamed everyone of the period, even if they had a (D) behind their name. Again, history.

That said it not surprising that you have very little to say about what actually happened then or that it is happening again just under some other administration.
 
When has roadbuilding or infrastructure spending ever been "treated as socialism" by anyone?

Cite examples. (Note: if you're going to try to spin any arguments for privatization into "treating it as socialism," then you, too, are arguing that any government spending is "socialism." One need not be arguing that something is "socialism" in order to say it should be privatized.)

the right molds their definition of socialism into whatever they find convenient at the moment.

so, where are we with Eisenhower marginal rates and union membership? i feel like we didn't totally cover that part.
 
the right molds their definition of socialism into whatever they find convenient at the moment.

Not in this thread, they didn't.
 
The 91% tax rate was a "marginal tax rate" which meant that the 91% rate only applied to those dollars which landed outside of the "margins".
In other words, if you made 401,000 last year, only the last thousand would be taxed at that marginal tax rate of 91% because everything UP TO the first four hundred thousand was taxed at a much lower rate.

And we're not even taking deductions into account, which is important because in that era, deductions were everything. The high marginal tax rate was part of a larger package that also offered generous deductions if you plowed your money into anything that worked out as reinvestment.

Almost no one actually paid the full 91% because the point was to incentivize doing something other than hoarding cash.

but wouldn't returning to the 1950s rates make everything awesome again? seems like they'd fight that top marginal rate pretty hard if the wrong person proposed it. just my opinion.
 
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