WHO'S IN, WHO'S OUT
Your article "When America Sent Her Own Packing" by Steve Boisson (October 2006) was the most unfair and biased item I have read in a long time. The article was pro-Mexican and very anti-American. I would like to know how many of the deported were full American citizens, legal residents and illegals, and how they obtained their status. I believe most were illegal.
The author obviously does not understand that the purpose of the American government was and is to protect the welfare of its citizens. Nowhere in the article did the author mention the terrible conditions in America at that time. There was a 25 percent unemployment rate, people were losing their homes and land, and banks and businesses were going broke. The government could not allow noncitizens to hold jobs while Americans were unemployed.
This is our home and we have every right to decide who we want to share it with and who we do not. Just because someone wants to live in America does not give them the right to come. When immigrants come in legally, apply for citizenship and learn English and our laws, then we will welcome them.
Jean Byrd
Harrisonburg, Va.
Steve Boisson replies: Roughly 60 percent of the deportees were American citizens, mostly by birth, though some had been naturalized. The requirements for Mexican nationals to attain legal status in the United States changed throughout the early 20th century. Before 1908 no records were kept of Mexicans moving into the country. In 1917 a head tax and a literacy test ensured one's legality, though in many cases—as during World War I—those requirements were waived. All of those folks, many of them undocumented but legal, would have been vulnerable. As then U.S. Secretary of Labor William Doak stated to the Los Angeles Record, "Certainly immigrants who were passed by the immigration officers and no record made cannot be regarded as having entered in violation of law."
Doak estimated that there were about 400,000 illegal immigrants in America at the time. He thought he could expel about 100,000. In hindsight it is clear that 100,000 deportations would have had little effect on the Great Depression. I'm sorry that I did not depict the harsh conditions to Ms. Byrd's satisfaction, as I had no intention of diminishing those terrible times. Our leaders were blindly grabbing for a quick fix for an intolerable situation. Eventually they settled on Mexicans, who did not start the Depression, and their expulsion did not resolve it.
We are a nation of laws. Those suspected of breaking any law are guaranteed by the Constitution to be brought to justice through due process. That did not happen in the case of the Mexican deportees, and some contemporary voices rallied against betraying our fundamental principles in the heat of desperation. The Los Angeles Record, on March 21, 1931, editorialized, "The tyrannical procedures of the immigration authorities and their impudent defiance of the law are too dangerous for all of us to be tolerated for one moment."
There is a significant difference between the immigration that occurred at the turn of the last century and today's situation. In 1900 there were 75 million U.S. residents and in 1970 there were 203 million, according to the Census Bureau. The Government Accountability Office estimates that 60 percent of the population increase from 1970 to our current 300 million figure is due to immigration.
This is having a profound effect: 8,700 acres of rural land disappear to development every day. Roads are overcrowded, and the number of vehicle miles driven is up 75 percent since 1980. If not for immigration, there would be no need for new oil refineries or drilling in environmentally sensitive areas.
I have traveled throughout Latin America and the Caribbean and have always enjoyed interacting with the people. The United States needs to help them achieve their economic, social and educational potential by imparting systems that will allow them to do so in their own countries. There is simply no room left in America and our natural resources are under too much stress for further immigration.
Robert Hook
Orlando, Fla.
Exactly how does the October editorial "Always an Immigrant Nation" reason that people's opposition to illegal immigrants is unjust? If immigrants enter this country by breaking the law, how shall they swear an oath to become honest citizens? People are not given citizenship because they are entitled to it but because they deserve it. Our country was founded on hard work and an almost fanatical devotion to liberty and freedom. Before we attack those who oppose amnesty to illegal immigrants, let us not make a mockery of the true meaning behind our country, which immigrants of the past worked so hard to uphold.
Zachary Cain
via e-mail
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