XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.california, misc.immigration
XPost: alt.politics.obama
Why Trump is the New Eisenhower on Immigration
By: Jeffrey Lord
August 21st, 2015
The issue? Illegal immigration.
The answer? The Republican candidate had an answer. If he were elected president, the illegals swarming into the United States from Mexico would
have to go.
No, the Republican candidate was not Donald Trump. The candidate in question was Dwight D. Eisenhower. And on Election Day of 1952, Ike was elected the nation’s 34th president in a landslide.
The General used buses. He used trains. He used ships. Most importantly he
used the agents of the U.S. Border patrol.
On June 17, 1954, using what today would be considered a deeply politically incorrect term, “Operation Wetback” began. Eisenhower had appointed a West Point classmate and veteran of the 10st Airborn, General Joseph “Jumpin’
Joe” Swing to head the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The Eisenhower directive to Swing was Trumpian: they have to go, round them up
and move them out. And in the kind of military style that Eisenhower himself had employed in organizing the massive logistics of the D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe, General Swing went to work.
The General used buses. He used trains. He used ships. Most importantly he
used the agents of the U.S. Border patrol. According to the Christian
Science Monitor some 750 Border Patrol agents began sweeping north from
Texas, eventually moving through Arizona, California, Utah, Idaho, and as
far north as Chicago.
Within a month, reports the Christian Science Monitor, in California and Arizona alone, “over 50,000 aliens were caught. Another 488,000, fearing arrest, had fled the country.”
Swing kept going. Again the CSM:
By September, 80,000 had been taken into custody in Texas, and an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 illegals had left the Lone Star State voluntarily. Unlike today, Mexicans caught in the roundup were not simply released at the
border, where they could easily reenter the US. To discourage their return, Swing arranged for buses and trains to take many aliens deep within Mexico before being set free. Tens of thousands more were put aboard two hired
ships, the Emancipation and the Mercurio. The ships ferried the aliens from Port Isabel, Texas, to Vera Cruz, Mexico, more than 500 miles south. The sea voyage was "a rough trip, and they did not like it," says Don Coppock, who worked his way up from Border Patrolman in 1941 to eventually head the
Border Patrol from 1960 to 1973.
And so it went, by the last years of Eisenhower’s second term – two years after he launched Operation Wetback he was re-elected in a landslide – the CSM reported:
General Swing's fast-moving campaign soon secured America's borders – an accomplishment no other president has since equaled. Illegal migration had dropped 95 percent by the late 1950s.
One of the minor controversies in Washington today is over the details of a memorial to Dwight Eisenhower. Critics hate the proposed plans, others
defend the design by famed architect Frank Gehry. But note well. Everyone agrees that Eisenhower should be honored. There is not a peep of
opposition – perhaps until liberal illegal immigration activists read this column – to the memorial on the grounds that Eisenhower’s Trumpian round-up of illegals was racist, immoral, cruel, and so dishonorable that Eisenhower should be read out of American history as a disgrace, with no monument ever
to be allowed to rest on the sacred soil of Washington, DC.
But today? Donald Trump suggests exactly the Eisenhower plan for dealing
with illegals and he is roundly denounced. The Wall Street Journal editorial board howls about the GOP becoming The Deportation Party, failing to note a word about Ike. The WSJ says – quite obviously erroneously – that” the Trump
outline would be the most radical crackdown on immigration since the 1920s.” Apparently the WSJ doesn’t consider Ike’s actions to be “radical” – or if so
there is not a peep from them about Ike’s “Deportation Party” of the 1950’s.
The paper adds:
Mr. Trump wants to triple the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to police the U.S.-Mexican border, track down undocumented
employees and visa overstays, and raid workplaces. Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” if his plan applies to all illegals, including kids, Mr. Trump said “they have to go.” Are his police going to search from door to door to arrest 11 million people? How else will they be rounded up?
The obvious answer to this is: Trump can dust-off Ike’s program and plumb government archives for General “Jumpin' Joe” Swing’s blueprints on how to
get the job done. More preposterously, the Journal writes:
The last time Republicans tried this, in the 1920s, they alienated immigrant groups like the Irish and Italians for decades until Ronald Reagan won them back. If they want to lose in 2016, they’ll follow Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant siren.
He’s [Trump] educating his fellow Americans that when it comes to deporting illegal immigrants – and structuring a program for legal immigrants – America, under the leadership of the revered Dwight D. Eisenhower, like
Donald Trump the descendant of German immigrants to America, has been there
and done that.
Wrong again.
There were three presidential elections in the 1920’s – 1920, 1924 and 1928.
The GOP won all three in landslides, immigration policies and all. The
defeats began in 1932 – as history well records because of the Great Depression. Not illegal immigration. And note again – after Eisenhower set his program to round up and deport illegals in motion he was re-elected two years later in a landslide. A landslide bigger than the one before Ike made
the GOP the “Deportation Party.” So much for alienating the electorate.
Undoubtedly, the problems our nation incurred from illegal immigration in
the ‘50s paled in comparison to the existential threat it poses today. It’s
quite unlikely that they dealt with the daily stories of murders, rapes, and kidnapping at the hands illegal aliens insidiously let out of jail. Nobody
is saying that a successful immigration enforcement plan requires physically rounding up every last illegal, but can we at least start with the 350,000 criminal aliens, as specified in Trump’s plan? If Eisenhower was able
deport most of the illegal aliens of his time and stem 95% of the flow,
there is no doubt we can deport a critical mass of them, especially those
who pose a security risk to our citizens.
Clearly, this is a way, as Eisenhower taught us. There is no will at the political level.
Donald Trump is leading a virtual revolution against the clubby insiders who run Washington, D.C. But he is also doing something else. He’s educating
his fellow Americans that when it comes to deporting illegal immigrants –
and structuring a program for legal immigrants – America, under the leadership of the revered Dwight D. Eisenhower, like Donald Trump the descendant of German immigrants to America, has been there and done that.
And today the only question about Ike that is being seriously debated is
what his monument in Washington should look like.
Whatever else Donald Trump may or may not be, without doubt when it comes to the issue of deporting illegal immigrants Donald Trump can easily be said to
be the new Dwight D. Eisenhower.
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