Immigration; whether it’s by the old fashioned way of filling out a form and patiently waiting an undetermined period of time before you get the yes or no answer. Or you skip across the border because you heard they were hiring and were paying ten times more than you were getting at home. Or you were just skipping across the border because the heat was on where you lived and you wanted take the pressure off until things cooled down.
Whatever the reason it’s been an issue that’s been part of our nation’s history since it got started. In the 17 and 1800’s it was the crying need for cheap labor to help dig mines, pave roads, build houses, get America on the road to success. Everybody was welcome because we had the reputation of taking the ones nobody wanted because we needed the bodies to haul heavy equipment around, do other people’s laundry, cook other people’s food.
And for that, the immigrant population became isolated, demeaned and scape goated. It used to be the big prejudices were towards the Irish, the Swedes, the Italians, the Chinese – just about anybody who arrived not knowing the language got pigeonholed.
But America needed them. So rather than send them packing when the job was done, we passed out citizenship papers and told them they were welcome – and they assimilated and in turn became the Americans just like the ones who came before them. Complete with their own set of prejudices.
It’s always been a question of supply and demand. During the Industrial Revolution the demand for cheap labor skyrocketed and once again the door flung open and the border guards looked the other way and the welcome mat was dusted off and laid at the entrance of every border.
And it pretty much stayed that way until World War 2 when it wasn’t so much a question of people coming in illegally as it was people coming in illegally with intentions of blowing things up and spying for the Axis. The most obvious being the rounding up of thousands of Japanese-Americans, many of whom lived in the U.S. and were citizens for some time, rounded up and transported to desolate quonset hut encampments where they would stay for the duration under conditions that that rivaled the Nazis concentration camps – minus the ovens, of course.
That little episode has wound up being the big ugly stain on an otherwise optimistic tapestry of human achievement.
But then along came the Cold War and the population boom and a shortage of labor – all the perfect storm to increase the quotas and fling open the doors for those who heard about the better life through better wages just across the border.
And so The Bracero Program came into existence. The program by which foreign nationals could land jobs and settle for an undetermined period of time while America actively engaged in prosperity.
So this episode of Mutual’s Northwestern Reviewing Stand from 1947 asks the question; “Should We Raise Immigration Quotas?”.
You would think that after some 70 years the issue of Immigration would be well past us. But I guess not.
Have a listen:
