America’s dependence on Mexico has a long history.

America’s dependence on Mexico has a long history.

This is a backup copy of a Facebook Note in case the original is lost or removed by one of Facebook's algorithms.

The ICE raids remind me that undocumented workers have been an integral part of the US economy for years. The Bracero program (from the Spanish term bracero, meaning manual laborer or one who works using his arms) was a series of laws and diplomatic agreements, initiated on August 4, 1942, when the United States signed the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement with Mexico.
That ended in 1965 with the Maquiladora program. Maquiladora is a Mexican assembly plant that imports materials and equipment on a duty-free and tariff-free basis. Maquiladoras receive raw materials from companies in the U.S. to assemble and export back as finished products. That was when crossing the border became more difficult, but by no means impossible.
At that point workers from Mexico, mostly men, came into the country for better wages and predictable good work, but found it easier to remit earnings to their families instead of sneaking back and forth across the border.

Over time they were joined by their wives and girlfriends to have families living in the US. That's where the derogatory term anchor babies originated -- implying that foreign women intentionally become pregnant to have American-born children to get free stuff. That was a malicious lie, of course. They were afraid to be identified lest they be deported (and because undocumented immigrants have zero eligibility for any benefits, not even the payroll and other taxes deducted from wages when they work). I sense this is when today's DACA kids were being born into families with mixed foreign- & natural-born American siblings.

Americans who don’t live near the Mexican border or that part of the West originally settled and developed by Spain and Mexico have no sense of our interdependence with Mexico. Many elementary school history lessons mention Westward expansion and manifest destiny without fully explaining the backstory. Most residents in huge parts of the Southwest don’t have the same cultural mix or language as those from the East. A generation or two ago many were either bi-lingual or spoke only Spanish. Their roots included black, indigenous and Asian ancestors. Their heritage was not the same as Easterners pursuing a manifest destiny, claiming all of North America “from sea to shining sea.” 

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Gadsden Purchase rounded out America’s Westward expansion even before we had states in that part of the country, mostly to accommodate train travel from coast to coast, reaping the benefits of a gold rush in California. Generations of families in Mexico, Hispanic/Latino both linguistically and culturally, went to bed one night as Mexicans and woke up the next morning living in America! Over time the rest of America has forgotten that even many American place names are of Spanish origin. Montana (mountainous or montaña means “mountain") and a few other states, Los Angeles (the angels), San Antonio (Saint Anthony) and an endless list of other place names derive from Spanish. Our heritage is rich with these roots, and referring to newcomers from the South as “invaders” is profoundly ignorant as well as hateful. Since many of them are identifiably brown, language like that is an expression of white racism.

 

This is my old man's story.

This Note was prompted by the ICE raids mentioned above. As I was writing about an experience I had years ago, getting an INS audit as a cafeteria manager, I realized the story no longer has meaning because so much has changed since then. As everyone knows, US immigration policy has been an unresolved mess forever, subject to change at the drop of a hat according to what political winds are blowing in Washington and across the country.
When I asked the INS agent at the time I was audited what was going to happen with US immigration policy he tossed it aside and replied candidly “Oh, someone will write a new policy. There will be another amnesty like we had during the Reagan years and we’ll start all over again.” I had been terrified about being audited. I didn’t dare mention it to anyone til my appointment was over, not even my associate manager or my wife! But he seemed unconcerned about the future. For him this was just another day at work.
Something tells me the people at ICE are not very different. They simply follow orders, and most of them, like that agent, are just doing their jobs. Like people everywhere, they mostly follow directions and do the best they can with the training and resources they get. That, of course, is the real problem ICE did not exist until after the World Trade Center attack which revealed how fragmented our security was which allowed a handful of terrorists, prepared to die for a cause, to fly airplanes into buildings. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was formed pursuant to the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and is the largest investigative arm of the DHS and second largest contributor to the nation's Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Events of the last couple of years indicate that with too much power in one place ICE has become a rogue agency and needs to be dismantled. It’s hard to know whether the mistreatment of families and children has been an unintended consequence of a poorly planned policy or a deliberate attempt to display cruelty in some savage attempt to “teach them a lesson” or “act as a deterrent.” It really makes no difference. With leadership more divided collaboration of more moving parts will be essential. Just as it takes whole departments to manage local, state and national missions, handling thousands of unarmed adults and children, without resources, who don’t even speak a common language is an unimaginable challenge. They come unarmed, not trying to sneak in, driven only by the knowledge that nothing can be worse than the life they are escaping. (In many ways FEMA faces similar challenges but that is another conversation. At least FEMA has, or should have, state and local resources available when needed.)