To Sin Against Hope

Оглавление

Alfredo Gutierrez. To Sin Against Hope

Отрывок из книги

To Sin Against Hope

Life and Politics on the Borderland

.....

What did happen in Congress was the successful blending of anti-communist hysteria and national immigration policy. The Internal Security Act of 1950 authorized the prosecution of anyone affiliated with a socialist or communist organization or deemed subversive in any way. The Act would be used to destroy progressive unions like the Mine Mill that championed human rights in the southwest, and to label the few outspoken Latino leaders that rejected Americanization as communists. The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 (passed over President Harry Truman’s veto) was an omnibus immigration bill that authorized the denaturalization of immigrants and decreed that any “unnaturalized” alien who had entered the US since 1924 could be summarily deported regardless of family, employment, character, or contribution to the country.

Apparently to counter criticism that the US government was complicit in the mongrelization of America, President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration declared war against the same “wetbacks” they were actively recruiting. Eisenhower chose a former general, Joseph Swing, to lead the task of removing millions of those “wetbacks.” General Swing had been the president’s roommate at West Point, had accompanied General Pershing in the failed “punitive expedition” against Pancho Villa, was a former commander of the 101st Airborne, and had performed distinguished service in the Pacific. Most importantly, he remained a close friend and confidant of the president. General Swing designed a secret military plan code-named “Operation Cloudburst,” calling for 4,000 soldiers to be deployed from Yuma, Arizona. The State Department and the ambassador to Mexico were adamantly opposed to the military solution. Swing himself would later testify that a military solution was “perfectly horrible.”13 Upon retirement from the Army in 1954, Swing was appointed Commissioner of Immigration and quickly named two retired generals as his assistants. “Operation Wetback” would be as close to a military response to the “illegal invasion” as politics and good diplomatic manners permitted.

.....