For the past several decades, Mexican immigrants have been seamlessly absorbed into American society and have been an economic benefit to America (particularly as our fertility rate dropped).
The unskilled Venezuelans who are coming are in a different situation. They don't have the skills are not helping our economy. Duh!
BTW, until the 1970s we did not have much of a border patrol. They guy who radically changed that was the commander of the Marines in Vietnam...and arguably not for the better. Fascinating story... Check it out below...great short podcast.
On Border Control, Joe Biden Is No Earl Warren
Politicians of both parties listened when Americans worried about immigration in the 1920s and 1950s.
By Jason L. Riley, WSJ
May 7, 2024
President Biden continues to test the nation’s tolerance for chaos on the Mexican border, and it may well cost him a second term. The White House regards illegal immigration as an afterthought, even though poll after poll ranks it as a top priority for voters.
Donald Trump’s ability to turn border security into a winning campaign issue was one of several ways he shocked the political press eight years ago. For decades people had vented to pollsters about undocumented immigrants but then allowed some other issue—taxes, abortion, gun control—to decide their votes. Mr. Biden is gambling that voters will return to pre-Trump form, that while they may be annoyed by the migrant situation, other concerns ultimately will determine who they support on Election Day. He might be right, but I wouldn’t take that bet.
Gallup reported last week that for the third consecutive month, voters ranked immigration as “the most important problem facing the U.S.,” which was “the longest stretch for this particular issue in 24 years.” A new Decision Desk HQ/News Nation survey found that 6 in 10 voters now say that immigration is bad for the country and trust Mr. Trump over Mr. Biden to handle the issue by a 46% to 26% margin.
A Monmouth University poll released in February reported that 53% of Americans want a wall constructed along the southern border. According to pollster Patrick Murray it was the first time that number had surpassed 50%, and support was significantly higher than the 44% who favored building a wall when Mr. Trump was president. Nor is it only Republicans who are complaining. “Illegal immigration has taken center stage as a defining issue this presidential election year,” Mr. Murray said. “Other Monmouth polling found this to be Biden’s weakest policy area, including among his fellow Democrats.”
When more than half of the country has come to view immigration as a negative and now want to fortify the Rio Grande, something more than Mr. Biden’s re-election prospects is at stake. A Trump victory could turn into a mandate for taking severe measures both to curb illegal migration and dramatically reduce the number of people allowed to come legally. It’s happened before.
Prior to joining the Supreme Court in 1954 and becoming the patron saint of judicial activism, Earl Warren was governor of California. On illegal border crossings, he was the Greg Abbott of his day. “The issue of illegal immigration,” political scientist Aristide Zolberg wrote, “surged to the political fore as California Governor Earl Warren, President Eisenhower’s close political ally, complained that the ‘wetback invasion’ imposed an unacceptable welfare burden on his state and demanded federal reimbursement.”
The Eisenhower administration responded by launching Operation Wetback in June 1954. Within six weeks, more than a million Mexican nationals in California and Texas had been rounded up and forcibly deported. In hindsight it wasn’t America’s finest hour, but the voting public at the time supported the move. In 1956 Eisenhower was re-elected in a landslide and left office four years later with a favorability rating of nearly 60%.
Some three decades earlier, voter sentiment toward legal immigration also had changed, and Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924 in response. The law implemented a national-origins quota system aimed at throttling migration from Southern and Eastern Europe. The bill passed both chambers with overwhelming bipartisan support (322-71 in the House and 62-6 in the Senate), and President Calvin Coolidge signed it into law. The quotas remained in place for the next four decades.
Moreover, groups that previously supported higher levels of immigration, or at worst expressed some uncertainty about newcomers, turned sharply against them. “America, the leading Catholic weekly, shifted decisively toward restriction in the course of the Red Scare, and by 1923 was referring to the new immigration as a handicap to Catholicism and to the nation,” Zolberg wrote. “African Americans, hitherto ambivalent at best on the subject of immigration, were overwhelmed by fear that [post-World War I] flows would jeopardize their race’s hard-earned foothold in northern industry, and shifted decisively to the restrictionist side as well.”
In general, the 1920s and 1950s were decades of prosperity in the U.S. Wages were rising, unemployment was low, and the middle class was expanding. None of this prevented the country from turning on immigrants in ways that shock our 21st-century sensibilities. Today, migrant job-seekers flagrantly exploit laws intended to protect refugees from persecution, while the Biden administration throws up its hands. Images on cable news show hordes of people physically forcing their way into our sovereign nation—on their terms rather than ours. We already know how Donald Trump would respond to the current moment. The mystery is why Joe Biden has been so willing to grease the skids.
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