http://public.csusm.edu/
"If we were rid of the aliens who have entered this country illegally since 1921, stealing in as burglars might enter our homes, our present employment problem would shrink to the proportions of a relatively flat spot in business." - J Quinn, LA Supervisor
CA and the US southwest have historically had a higher % of Latino residents due to proximity to Mexico and former Spanish-Mexican sovereignty. Since the first days the US settled the West, we have been importing cheap Mexican laborers. Some of those people had children here who were born US citizens, supposedly with full legal rights on paper. They didn't sneak in here... they were asked to come here and had families in accordance with US laws. They helped Americans survive and prosper, despite often being treated inferior.
The "Mexican Repatriation" under Hoover during the Depression was an outrageous response by a desperate nation to keep "American jobs in the hands of REAL Americans." Where have we heard that before? As if getting rid of Mexicans would have ended the Depression - it probably would have exacerbated it! Next there was the illusion of immigrants "sucking America dry" and living off the gov't teat. People of Mexican descent were only 12% of the welfare rolls, consuming on average $20/month of gov't assistance (and that assistance was passed on in the form of consumer spending, often to white businesses). Yet deporting them cost taxpayers $68/family. So what were we gaining? Some of the people we kicked out were taxpayers and "job creators" too.
During 1929-1944, over 2M people were deported under this program, and 1.2M of them (60%) were US CITIZENS. It's not like they got rid of all Latinos, so in some cases families were broken up in the indiscriminate dragnet and never reunited (like ICE's rounding up of illegals today). The social climate was so hostile to Latinos that many of them voluntarily left the US too, at the rate of 10K/month in 1931. Similar to the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Latinos who weren't rounded up were often blocked or intimidated away from gov't services and employment. So if US society wasn't letting them make a living, is it any wonder why some of them ended up on welfare? A self-fulfilling racist prophecy. The "we're getting rid of criminal Mexicans" myth was pervasive, but it was likely that more crimes were being committed against Latinos than by Latinos at that time (Latinos rarely reported crimes against them to authorities, and witnesses would rarely stick their necks out for them).
The program explicitly targeted Latinos, and I am sure they were dispossessed of their legal property like what happened to the interned Japanese-Americans (we often forget that they were US citizens too). It is a tragedy of our education system that me as a US-born citizen didn't learn of this until I was 34. Speaking of Japanese Internment, some speculate that the Mexican Repatriation was a "warm up" and learning experience for the US gov't so they were more able to efficiently handle the Japanese-Americans.
In February 2005, California State Senator Joseph Dunn (D-Garden Grove) introduced Senate Bill 670 to apologize for the "unconstitutional removal and coerced migration" of Californians during the Great Depression. Before "The Apology Act for the 1930s Mexican Repatriation Program" was passed on February 22, it had twice been vetoed by Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis. - C Frame, CSUSM
They were supposed to erect a plaque commemorating this tragedy, but so far nothing has been done.
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