It is striking that, in many ways, conservative America’s perception of undocumented migrants has not changed since the 1940s. I was reminded of this today as I read my 1976 master’s thesis on the newspaper reporting of immigration.
Here is an excerpt:
… Author John Myers Myers asserts that many undocumented Mexican workers “have criminal records … If historically America has been settled and developed by men hailing from a gamut of countries, the wetback is not of a piece with these. Although willing to claim United States citizenship in pursuit of his designs, he typically has no thought of cutting his ties with his own land by becoming a true part of this one. He
adds that the “illegal alien” sends most of his money to Mexico and
“is no more troubled about being unwanted than yellowjackets at a
picnic.” In describing the history of the undocumented Mexican
worker, he claims that he was granted “amnesty during World War
II because labor was badly needed. However, even after the war,
“illegals” were used. “And county politicos said nothing because
the farmers who paid most of the taxes were satisfied with the situation. For the wetback families formed a labor pool that knocked wages down to within spitting distance of the vanishing point.
Robert Tomasek, who wrote of Mexican labor in the United
States charges the “wetback” … “lowered wages, displaced
domestic migrants spread disease and crime, and probably worst
of all, set back the assimilation process of the Mexican-American by
a generation.
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 