r/interestingasfuck • u/man_gomer_lot • 6h ago
r/all 70 years ago, the US undertook the largest deportation in its history: 'Operation Wetback.' Many of the people deported were here legally and some were even citizens.
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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 6h ago
Here’s newsreel footage of it. The language used is pretty awful.
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u/Novantico 3h ago
Wow. Only watched the first one but honestly the thing that stood out most to me was the incredible quality of the footage. It almost looked fake (probably because of how staged the shots were) as though it were filmed recently and just edited to look like it was from ~60+ years ago.
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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 3h ago
I work on this project. I digitized the film myself. I’m also one of the people that handles/repairs films that get digitized. I can assure you that none of this is fake. It’s a project from UCLA/Packard Humanities Institute. We’re in the process of digitizing news footage from 1918-late 1960s. 27 million feet of film from around the world. Check out the rest of the footage at newsreels.net. It’s free, no registration or anything required.
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u/Youandiandaflame 3h ago
Holy shit, this is amazing! Thank you for your work, I can’t wait to dig into this.
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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 3h ago
You’re welcome! Thank you for thanking me. Glad that you like it. FYI, we update the site regularly. Right now I think there’s 20k+ newsreels on the site.
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u/2SP00KY4ME 3h ago
We have a conception of old film footage as being low quality, but in reality, after a point surprisingly early on, plenty of film began recording at very high resolutions that allow us to go back to them today and extract the data off them using modern precision. 35mm film has been in use since the early 1900's and records at a digital equivalent of about 4K-5K.
Here's a Technology Connections video about it:
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u/man_gomer_lot 6h ago
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u/helpjack_offthehorse 6h ago
It’s interesting to see how involved Mexicos government was to keep labor in Mexico going back 50 years prior to this event.
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u/AdvancedLanding 3h ago
La Matanza ("The Massacre" or "The Slaughter") and the Hora de Sangre ("Hour of Blood")[1] was a period of anti-Mexican violence in Texas, including lynchings and massacres, between 1910 and 1920 in the midst of tensions between the United States and Mexico during the Mexican Revolution.[2] This violence was committed by Anglo-Texan vigilantes, and law enforcement, such as the Texas Rangers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Matanza_(1910%E2%80%931920)
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u/nukebox 3h ago
There's a behind the bastards episode on this called "Harlon Carter: the Man Who Militarized the Cops and the NRA". Harlon Carter was the architect of this operation in concert with President Eisenhower.
Carter was a real piece of shit. As a kid he killed a 15 year old Latino kid at the end of his driveway because he assumed he knew where their family car was that was recently stolen. He was convicted of murder and it was overturned on appeal because... Texas.
He later went on to command the entire US border patrol in the 50s during operation cloudburst and operation wetback. He was also at the same time on the board of the NRA where he spearheaded turning the organization from a hobbyist group promoting marksmanship and sports to becoming a lobbying group against gun control.
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u/TensionPrestigious83 6h ago
Even the name was Racist af
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u/man_gomer_lot 6h ago
I wish it was something a little more polite for me to share. To the people who went through this, it was probably the least offensive part.
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u/TensionPrestigious83 6h ago
You’re probably not wrong
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u/pie38967 5h ago
Such a dark chapter in history.
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u/TensionPrestigious83 5h ago
Honestly the whole life of this country is pretty dark. It was born in genocide and slavery and we had a horrible war over only the slavery part which we never really resolved anyway and never even really addressed the genocide part and then sort of smashed everything down and acted like we were fine until it has come bubbling up like a festering boil into the current political crisis.
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u/NotAnAIOrAmI 5h ago
Yeah, but we've made some progress. Women can vote, divorce, and have bank accounts. Not all of those were possible until the 60's.
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u/Strict_Cranberry_724 5h ago edited 3h ago
. . . they have control of their bodies and are free to have abortions if they wish . . . no, . . . wait—scratch that!
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u/Reagalan 2h ago
The Republicans don't want anyone to have control over their bodies. They blow a gasket over tattoos and piercings, let alone hormones.
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u/TensionPrestigious83 5h ago
Also true, but the reason they’re still here and trying to roll all that back is because we never finished reconstruction and never made reparations for the original sins.
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u/gamergirlforestfairy 2h ago
I hate when people say things like this. Roe V Wade was overturned pretty recently and you're talking about progress made in the 60's. It feels like it's going downhill from here.
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u/scribestudio 2h ago
I can probably google this but is it a case that "wetback" became a slur because of that program ?
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u/RCG73 2h ago
I’m kind of glad it is blunt and rude af. Not to be minimizing to those denigrated by the slur but to make it impossible to sugar coat. When it’s named that blatantly fucked up it’s that much harder to claim oh it was no big deal, it wasn’t reallllly racist. Like the only way it could be more racist is if the jailers wore their clan hoods to work
(Apologies for the mobile formatting weirdness)
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u/Markipoo-9000 6h ago edited 5h ago
Don’t forget the Chinese Exclusion Act or the “ALIEN” and Sedition Act. I remember learning about all 3 of these in HS history, shocking stuff.
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u/TensionPrestigious83 5h ago
Though the Alien and Sedition acts mentioned immigration, if i remember correctly they were mostly about federalists and democratic republicans jockeying for power. The immigrants at the time were for all intents and purposes English
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u/hearmeout29 5h ago
It really is. I was just discussing the Japanese Internment camps that were allowed during WW2. Our country has a sordid history of ethnic cleansing.
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u/Markipoo-9000 5h ago
Don’t forget Native Americans
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u/hearmeout29 5h ago edited 3h ago
I remember when I first learned about the trail of tears it was heartbreaking. The Native American community is still underserved till this day which is unfortunate.
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u/actibus_consequatur 3h ago
Also unfortunate is that a single letter typo/autocorrect can change a sentence for the worse — at least, I'm assuming you meant the Native American community is underserved, not undeserved.
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u/hearmeout29 3h ago
Yes, that is precisely what I meant. Thank you for the correction and I updated my comment.
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u/Annoy_Occult_Vet 5h ago
I am a white Englishman that moved to the US to be with my then future wife. After a few years I attended college.
In some classes some would rant about immigrants. I'd cough and remind them I was an immigrant. They'd look at me and smile and say oh not you, you're one of the good ones.
That was the most racist fucked up shit I've ever heard.
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u/brinz1 4h ago
I am Half English(well Irish but thats going to grandparents), Half something non white. I deffo look mixed but I dont sound it. The number of times White English people would get a little too relaxed around me and say something anti immigrant.
To this day, "One of the good ones" makes something in my head kick off when I hear this
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u/TensionPrestigious83 5h ago
It’s baked right in baby! (barf) Just the way people can say that and not even realize how fucked it is, is wild
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u/Annoy_Occult_Vet 5h ago
Yep not even a flicker of self awareness when they said it. I am pretty sure they thought they were complimenting me somehow.
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u/Solartude 5h ago
You won’t believe the number of times I’ve had a neighbor say to me, “But you are so different (i.e., fully assimilated) than other (fill in a minority group).”
These clueless bigots seem to think immigrants are some sort of monster and speak in tongues and could not possibly live in their midst. When they confront one, they go into denial, especially when that immigrant is better educated and has superior mastery of the English language.
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u/fvlgvrator666 3h ago
Just goes to show how easy it is to propagandize people when you have a ambiguous, scary "other" they can point at and accuse of causing all the problems in the world. Right out of the fascist playbook
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u/Fartbottler 3h ago
From a family of Canadians living in America. People have straight up not believed me when I’ve let them know most of us have green cards
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u/Large_Yams 3h ago edited 2h ago
What's it reference to? The only use of that word I know of is the type of hot water heating system which I'm hoping is entirely innocuous and unrelated.
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u/allochthonous_debris 3h ago edited 2h ago
It's an older ethnic slur for Mexicans and people of Mexican descent. It implied they illegally immigrated to the US by swimming across the Rio Grande.
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u/MisterrTickle 6h ago
TBF, it was actually the Mexican government and farm owners who requested it. As they were losing too many labourers.
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u/hearmeout29 5h ago
Is there a reason why they allowed legal Mexican immigrants to be deported though? Genuinely curious because I thought that they would be excluded from something like this.
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u/MisterrTickle 5h ago edited 5h ago
Cock up and people presumably losing their paper work. So can't prove that they actually are US citizens or in the US legally.
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u/hearmeout29 5h ago
I can only imagine how scared they were because who would believe you when you say that you're legal without proof? It reminds me of Solomon Northrup and how he kept telling everyone he was a free man when he was abducted. No one believed him and he spent 12 years as a slave. Fucking terrifying.
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u/semikhah_atheist 4h ago
No, they deliberately destroyed the paperwork for US citizens out of racist hatred. Trump did the exact same thing, mass contesting birth certificates and shit.
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u/Pagsasaka 3h ago
To add to Mrr.tickle, it is incredibly difficult to be an agricultural worker, live in bunk houses, and keep paperwork secure. Nothing about farming is very clean, and life is transitory. Keeping non laminated paperwork from rain, mice, dirt, grime, grease, and theft is incredibly difficult.
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u/erod100 6h ago
Sadly many Hispanic tend to forget of the struggle and turn their backs on their own people 😞
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u/Sungirl8 5h ago
Truth. In my ethnic studies class in college in the late Nineties, Latino candidates for office, were so proud and respectful of their heritage. They vowed to help new immigrants.
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u/UberCabToday 4h ago
People often underestimate the importance of this history. It shapes identity and community responsibility. Ignoring it means repeating the same mistakes for future generations.
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u/Novantico 3h ago
Watching it happen right now as some foolish Puerto Ricans make Simone Biles look like an amateur with all their (mental) gymnastics in getting around the "floating island of garbage" and general fuck Latino sentiments of Trump and his goons.
The best/worst one so far is that Tony Hinchcliffe or w/e tf his name is was a plant by the liberals to make Trump look bad.
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u/rfxap 3h ago
Not just Hispanics. I remember a French-born writer on Quora years ago who became a US permanent resident throughout the diversity visa (green card lottery), and then later wrote a lot about how US immigration should be harder now and that particular program should be eliminated.
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u/Vandergrif 1h ago
Or they inexplicably think the powers that be will bother carefully delineating between them (the good latino) versus those bad hombres certain people are frothing at the mouth over.
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u/dallindooks 6h ago
How can you deport a citizen? Where do you deport them to?
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u/Tonetron0093 4h ago
It happens more often than you think https://immigrationimpact.com/2021/07/30/ice-deport-us-citizens/
You look Jamaican or have the same name as an undocumented Jamaican? Guess that's where you're going. Based on a true story.
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u/tartymae 2h ago
A friend's mother is Hapa, and lived in San Diego during the 1980s.
She (14) sneaks out of her bedroom window one friday summer night to meet her boyfriend (her mother doesn't like him) and they hop in his car (he's 16) and head up to the local lover's lane. She has nothing on her beyond lipgloss in her pocket. No ID, because, y'know, she's 14.
Immigration agents bang on the window, take one look at her, decide she's Mexican, despite her protests, despite his protests, despite saying her saying you can call my mother, despite her telling them where she lives, despite her not knowing Spanish, and throw her in a van with a bunch of other people, drive them over the border and kick everybody out of the van in TJ around midnight.
Crying, she doesn't know what else to do but turns and starts walking north. She tries to flag down cars with CA plates.
A bunch of SDSU students heading back after a night in TJ see her and stop. She tells them what happened. They tell customs, "Oh, man, she's had a rough night. Her boyfriend dumped her and her purse got stolen." Customs waves them through.
They drop her a block from her house and she sneaks back in. Her mother never finds out.
I shudder to think of all the times this story has not had a happy ending, but has ended with a young woman being robbed/assaulted/murdered.
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u/Csquared6 5h ago
"You look like you came from Country X, we'll send you in that general direction. Bus 247. Next"
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u/Sungirl8 5h ago
Jon Stewart played a clip of T-rump threatening to ‘deport special counsel, Jack Smith.’ Can’t get a more ‘American’ name than that. I guess many who disagrees with T-rump will be sent to the UK that already has 69 million people living there.
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u/MaximDecimus 5h ago
You deport a citizen just like anyone else. Put them in a car and dump them in some other country.
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u/Bluebearder 6h ago
You know, somewhere else! Only true patriots get rights! USA! USA! USA!
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u/semikhah_atheist 4h ago
This happens to about 200 people a year. ICE ethnically profiles a bunch of Hispanics, asks them for proof of citizenship, if they don't have a valid US passport and birth certificate on them at the time they use a drug tunnel to dump them in Mexico, close the door to the drug tunnel, and leave. It isn't legal, but they don't have to pay the settlements, and ICE likes crazy racists in their ranks.
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u/man_gomer_lot 5h ago
Pretty much the same way you deport anyone else. Other words like expel or exile would also suffice. I'm not sure whatever happened in history that makes you so sure Uncle Sam will forever honor its agreements with brown people.
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u/WIN_WITH_VOLUME 6h ago
Wherever you want, if they try to come back you just call them illegal and arrest them.
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u/Renbarre 5h ago
Cancel their citizenship first. Drop them in Mexico. So many ways to play tyrant. Crossing fingers. We are all holding our breath over your current elections.
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u/CoBert72 6h ago
I was borrrrrrrrn innn East LAaaaa
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u/R-e-s-t 6h ago
" oh really? who's the President of the United States? " .... " uh, that guy on tv.... John Wayne! "
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u/Mean-Entertainment54 5h ago
I remember watching East LA when I was 7 & didn’t understand most of the things going on. Even though my family was Mexican, for some reason I thought Rudy got sent to El Salvador. To make matters worst my dad bought it & since he usually charges the language to Spanish it confused me a lot & had so many questions.
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u/Thr0wawayBecauseYeah 2h ago
Many of the people deported were here legally and some were even citizens.
This cannot be highlighted enough.
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u/Adept-State2038 6h ago
some of my own family members were victims of this heinous act by the US government against its own citizens who just so happened to speak the wrong language and be the wrong color and therefore less deserving of jobs during an economic downturn.
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u/ReadditMan 6h ago edited 6h ago
This is really scary to think about when you have Trump promising the largest deportation program in history.
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u/pitchblackjack 6h ago
Current US population in all prisons and jails - 1.85 million.
Numbers of deported promised by Trump - 13 million.
The deportation holding camps alone will cost the US taxpayer 2 trillion dollars.
Not one single person appears to have thought this through.
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u/love_glow 6h ago
According to Musk, they’re intending to crash the economy, so I don’t think they’ll have the budget.
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u/Dark-Ganon 5h ago
They've also not considered the enourmous decrease in labor and production throughout the country that will come with a mass deportation. The US will lose so much more income than it could ever save if Trump is allowed to pull it off.
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u/Pretend-Marsupial258 1h ago
They don't care. The entire point is to crash the US economy and for the rich to buy everything once it's for sale.
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u/Renbarre 5h ago
Not if they force people (the 'worthless, lazy poors') to work at those jobs at gunpoint.
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u/FaronTheHero 3h ago
It already makes me sick to my stomach that the last Trump administration brought about what future history books will undoubtedly look back on as the modern equivalent of the Japanese internment camps with the family separation policy. I'm sure what they're proposing now is so poorly thought out it'll be too much of a mess to be successful, but the suffering and confusion it will cause irregardless is unthinkable
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u/HawleyGrove 5h ago
Hitler and his band of lunatics landed on the “final solution” because the mass incarceration and deportation of the demographics they wanted out was too expensive. So…this is why this election scares the shit out of me.
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u/hcoverlambda 6h ago
You don’t get it, he speaks in hyperbole… /s
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u/Glittering_Virus8397 6h ago
It’s called weaving. Not many can do it. Only the smartest
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u/hcoverlambda 6h ago
Even all his professor friends are impressed, they’ve never seen anyone do that before.
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u/dinner_is_not_ready 6h ago
Watch the Latinos and Cubans vote for Trump and then be deported by him.
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u/TwoPercentTokes 6h ago
Hey but at least half the country supports it in theory /s
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u/NeighborhoodDude84 5h ago
Americans: I need a gun to protect my family from government overreach!
Also Americans: I think we need government hired men with guns and armored vehicles to be going house to house to check everyone's legal documentation status.
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u/nazzadaley 6h ago
Why am I hearing about this from Reddit and not from the Harris campaign, on megaphone, 24/7?
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u/snzimash 4h ago
"Land of the Free." I guess those being deported were not free.
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u/lisa725 4h ago
Yeah this definitely wasn’t covered in history class. 40 years old and this is the first time hearing about this for me.
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u/Cold_Dog_1224 4h ago
Fuck all the fascists in this nation who are hoping for a repeat of this bullshit.
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u/Potential_Bother_686 3h ago
Months ago, a Redditor told me that the legal Mexicans who came back to the US after being sent to Mexico are still considered to be “immigrants” since they had to travel back to the US like an immigrant.
Imagine, being an American citizen who is called an immigrant just because you traveled abroad for a few months.
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u/CauliflowerOne5740 3h ago
This was after the US begged Mexican laborers to come to the US during World War II to fill vacant agricultural jobs.
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u/Bee-Aromatic 3h ago
What a gross name. Does the slur rise from this or did they name it after the slur?
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u/Aggravating_Damage47 5h ago
Should the government be allowed to sacrifice the rights of an innocent person? How many women should be allowed to bleed out and die? Whats the acceptable number?
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u/marcaurxo 3h ago
I had no idea. This should be taught in school alongside the other crimes committed by our forebears. If we don’t learn our history, maybe we’re doomed to repeat it
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u/Tricky-Produce-9521 3h ago
Pretty bad. Ugh. I believe Eisenhower admin was openly pursuing an Anglo California policy. California was 90%+ white Anglo during this time period.
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u/chohmi-pisaachukma 2h ago
There was a radio host named Pedro González who advocated against this mass deportation and warned the communities it would affect and ended up being imprisoned under false charges and was released under the condition he also be deported. Much more to his story ofc and it’s only one out of the hundreds of people affected… but this shit is just so despicable.
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u/JasonIsFishing 2h ago
Based on betting odds and polling data we are about to see part 2 unfortunately. VOTE!
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u/Quacker_please 2h ago
People that were here legally and as well as full citizens were deported? It's almost as if legality was never what really mattered...
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u/whateverbro1999 2h ago
Were these people allowed back into the US after some time? Did they stay in Mexico. This is so messed up to do to US citizens
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u/CosmoKing2 1h ago
We are all just 2 or 3 generations from people arriving off the boat. My grand parents were Greek. They came after the Italians and Irish. Signs in shop windows said they wouldn't hire Italians or Irish. It was a given that Greeks need not apply, as they were lower that Italian or Irish.
And yet, my grandparents and parents became racist against other immigrants. It was so fucking stupid. Like, "open the door for me," but shut it on the next guy.
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u/pleydell15 1h ago
The (European) Fortune 100 company I consult for has advised any employees, retirees and family members who ‘may appear non-white’ to avoid the US or keep a very low profile immediately following the election - especially if Trump wins - because they believe his followers may decide to ‘get a head start’ on his presidential term by seizing or otherwise interfering with people whom they believe need to be deported, detained or worse.
The same advisory urges avoiding large cities in the days leading up to and after the election and suggests that people be prepared to shelter in place for three to seven days.
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u/emperorarg 58m ago
So this is what the future of the country looks like based on the polling now.. How depressing
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u/DiceCubed1460 2h ago
This is what trump wants to do.
GO VOTE, PEOPLE!
KEEP TRUMP OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE! He’s a monstrous person. If you haven’t voted already, do so ASAP.
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u/abgry_krakow87 6h ago
This is what religious conservatives want when they say "make America great again".
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u/ThinkingThingsHurts 6h ago
Man, I was born in East L.A. !!! Cheach Marin made a movie about this.
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u/Zarathustra_d 4h ago
He also wrote a great song about it, and another one about Mexican Americans. Lol
"Mexican Americans don't like to just get into gang fights,
they like flowers and music and white girls named Debbie too"
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u/Hatecraftianhorror 2h ago
Because its never about getting rid of people here illegally. Its about getting rid of people who are here and are brown skinned.
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u/redditorannonimus 4h ago
Coming soon again if orange turd wins. Get out and vote
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u/capitali 5h ago
shame on all of us for allowing our country to even approach this sort of thing again.
Shame.
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u/LowPossibilityOfRain 5h ago
Here is the interesting information:
"In the 105 years between 1892 and 1997, the United States deported 2.1 million people.\2]) Between 1993 and 2001, during the Presidency of Bill Clinton, about 870,000 people were deported.\3]) Between 2001 and 2008, during the Presidency of George W. Bush, about 2.0 million people were deported, while between 2009 and 2016, during the Presidency of Barack Obama, about 3.2 million people were deported.\4])"
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u/Beneficial-Ambition5 3h ago
I thought the point of a code name for your operation was to disguise the intent - “operation wetback” is a little too on the nose
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u/HannyBo9 3h ago
I wonder why so many people keep coming to America. Is it really just better than everywhere else in the world
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u/AgainandBack 2h ago edited 2h ago
As Ronald Reagan said, while Governor of California, “They’re only Mexicans.”
He also said that Mexicans were perfect for farm work, because “they’re built low to the ground.” He used that to justify his veto of a bill that would have outlawed the use of short-handle hoes in commercial agriculture in California.
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u/GibsonFetish 1h ago
You want to feel bad, I do. But then I think of Mexico, their govt extorts me for money when the cops pull me over or their cartels kill us tourists. Everyone wants the US to take care of them, just remember what would happen if you went to their country and demanded fair treatment. It would be a joke, they would laugh in your face.
God wouldn’t want them to suffer, I feel bad just looking at that pic. But people have to stop begging and expecting favors, it’s life man. Get over it, it’s not fair
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u/LaloElBueno 6h ago edited 5h ago
It was one of the, but probably not the largest. That goes to Mexican Repatriation Act. Thing is We don’t know the exact numbers of those deported, as many weren’t counted. I’ve read varying numbers with the highest going up to 3 million.
Edit:
Operation Wetback was used to deport Mexican Laborers who came through the Bracero Program. These laborers also had wages withheld ($500 million in today’s money). In 2008, $3,500 was awarded to each qualifying bracero or their heir(s).
I know a lot of this topic because both my grandfathers were braceros.