Operation Wetback

Earlier this morning, the following message lands in my inbox:

Don't understand the big deal over deporting illegal aliens. It certainly was no problem for the past presidents HOOVER AND EISENHOWER.

Back during the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover ordered the deportation of all illegal aliens in order to make jobs available to American citizens that desperately needed work.

And then again in 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower deported 13 million Mexican nationals! The program was called "Operation Wetback" so that American WWII and Korean veterans had a better chance at jobs. It took 2 years, but they deported them!

Now, if they could deport the illegals back then, they can sure do it today!! If you have doubts about the veracity of this information, enter Operation Wetback into your favorite search engine and confirm it for yourself.

Reminder. Don't forget to pay your taxes, 50 million illegal aliens are depending on you!

Ok, there are some problems with this way of thinking. Re-implementing a program like "Operation Wetback" wouldn't work today for a number of reasons. First, "Wetback" is a derogatory term and using it would cause all kinds of chaos. Not a wise choice in terms. Second, although we'd all like to simply kick them back over the border and say "Not my problem" it doesn't solve the bigger problem. Let's look at the second reason a bit more.

Everyone talks about how illegal aliens are hurting our economy but no one thinks about why it is that they are over here in the first place. The reason? The Mexican economy is so bad that illegal aliens from Mexico come over here to make more money. The level of poverty and corruption is pretty damn bad. I can not blame anyone who tries to make a better life for themselves and their family. Can you?

To say to these people, "Get out! You're not welcome here!" That's an elitist attitude. What makes you or I any better than someone simply trying to make due? That ignores the very problem that is causing immigration problems to run rampant and it's irresponsible. Why don't you hear about problems with illegal Canadians? Cause, unlike Mexico, Canada actually has a pretty good economy. There is no motivation for Canadians to come into the United States illegally.

Look, this country was founded and created by rejecting the Old World and creating a New World. Problem now is that we're no longer the New World. An even newer world is being created. We're talking about globalization here. Another problem is that more than 80 percent of our economy is domestic. We react in horror to any Americans who speak a second language - God forbid, Spanish - as if the big problem is that we have too many people speaking foreign languages. Hell, as it stands we don't really have a whole lot of foreign travel by Americans. As such, we have a whole bunch of people who don't realize that things have changed in the world.

U.S. businesses get it though. They're outsourcing like crazy in an effort to remain competitive in a world economy. American universities get it too. They're bringing in students from all parts of the world. Research is being done everywhere as well. The people who really don't get is is the people you've elected in Washington, D.C. We would rather rely on intelligence reports (which God knows are 100% accurate) to tell us what we need to know rather than simply talking with the countries we know little about. That kind of foreign policy does little to promote openness in a world economy.

What we have to do is talk to the Mexican government and see what we can do to help boost their economy. If you help them make their economy more strong and give Mexicans the opportunity at obtaining good jobs then you'll see a great reduction in illegal immigration. But what you can't do is say "Mexico is not our problem". Every country that borders us is our problem. The relationship we have with Canada and Mexico is extremely important. The better we're able to help each other build our economies the stronger we'll be in the world economy.

As far as the immigrants that are here, I don't see how we can realistically deport all of them. What we're doing now is not pro-active and is not a healthy attitude for America. Perhaps we can look at encouraging those who are illegal to become legal. Help them understand what it is to be an American. Encourage them to learn English. If we don't then they'll continue to hide in the shadows.

Best way I can think of to give you a taste of what I'm talking about is to have you watch an episode of 30 Days that deals with immigration. Morgan Spurlock created the series and many of the episodes are pretty darn interesting. The one on immigration though was a real eye opener. In it, Morgan took a guy who was a Minuteman and has him spend a month with a Los Angeles Mexican family in a one-bedroom apartment. He ends up going to Mexico to see where this family originated from. What he sees shocks him.

If you can rent it and watch it, do it. Blockbuster should have it available to rent. It's from Season 2, episode 2 I think. It's also coming up as a rerun on FX as well. If you have a DVR, do a search and set it to record.

This is a hot button topic that unfortunately does not have a simple solution. The problem is much bigger and much different than you think. And in order to solve this we have to get past the kind of rhetoric and B.S. that is inherent in the kind of correspondence that was in that e-mail about the Australian PM. We have to look at the facts and not pre-judge. Otherwise we run the risk of making rash decisions on the basis of a gut-reaction rather than making educated decisions based on facts.