Tancredo discusses how President Eisenhower handled deportation in the 50s.

Eisenhower and illegals
By Tom Tancredo
July 13, 2007

When the Senate's amnesty bill met its inglorious end on June 28, the American people dodged a bullet. With amnesty legislation now off the table, it is time to get serious about border control and enforcement of our nation's immigration laws. Maybe we can learn something from the way President Eisenhower handled the same problem in 1953, when he moved into the White House.

Eisenhower was faced with a porous border that saw a million illegal aliens apprehended in 1951, and the total number of illegal aliens in the country was estimated to be above 3 million.

The "Bracero" program brought legal agricultural workers to the Southwest from Mexico beginning in 1942, when the region faced a genuine labor shortage due to World War II. But by 1953, the program had deteriorated into a corrupt system for importing cheap labor for Texas and California employers. The contract laborers had by then discovered that they could leave the farms and make equal or better wages in Los Angeles, Dallas and Phoenix. Sound familiar? The sheep ranchers of Colorado and Wyoming make the same complaint about the contract sheep herders they bring from Peru and Portugal.

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