Little did they know at the time, but many Mexicans were basically signing contracts to be deported at a later date. Not only was the bracero program, which imported Mexicans for labor, still in effect for the span of Operation Wetback, but many U.S. citizens were deported unfairly, due to their Mexican descent. In some cases, illegal immigrants were deported along with their American-born children, who were by law U.S. citizens. The agents used a wide brush in their criteria for interrogating potential aliens. They adopted the practice of stopping "Mexican-looking" citizens on the street and asking for identification. Of those unfairly deported were political activists and other Mexican American leaders. This combination of actions makes the United States' position rather clear - Mexicans are valuable as a bottom of the ladder labor resource, but are a threat, and therefore should be eradicated from the country, even if it was necessary to stretch the law to do so, for they often hold well-regarded rankings of leadership. Operation Wetback was really a response to the weakening of the contract-labor system that regularized the pool of cheap labor, especially for agribusiness. It was meant to scare the braceros into remaining in their camps and accepting their conditions and, in this way, to preserve the revolving door of reserve surplus labor from Mexico. .
World War II and the postwar period intensified the Mexican migration to the United States, as the demand for cheap agricultural laborers increased. Studies conducted over a period of several years indicate that the Bracero program increased the number of illegal aliens in Texas and the rest of the country. Because of the low wages paid to legal, contracted braceros, many of them ditched their contracts to return home or to work somewhere else for better wages. Increasing complaints from various Mexican officials in the United States and Mexico pressed the Mexican government to overturn the bracero agreement and stop the export of Mexican workers.
The book is divided into three parts: Formation, Transformation and Operation wetback and beyond. ... Therefore, in order to control the situation, it was created the Operation Wetback in 1954, which can be summarized as a "mass deportation campaign targeting Mexican nationals "-(169). ...
Such distorted policy is implemented by Operation Gatekeeper. ... Nor was it during "Operation Wetback- in the 1950s which primarily focused on Mexicans being deported back to Mexico, along with their American born children, which were technically American citizens (Operation Gatekeeper: -New Resoures-1). ... ("Operation Gatekeeper Report- n.pag.). ... ("Operation Gatekeeper Fact Sheet-). ... ("Operation Gatekeeper Fact Sheet-). ...
"Back in 1954 the US INS put in practice the Operation Wetback, which was intended to remove one million illegal immigrants from southwestern USA through the use of racial profiling, ending up removing near the million illegal immigrants targeted" (The Police Should Use Racial Profiling To Tackle The Problems Of Illegal Immigration). ...
., 2009) In 1954 the racist term "wetback" came into common practice after the implementation of Operation Wetback, a 1954 program to deport undocumented Mexican-American workers who did not fall within the Bracero Program's mandate. ...
Some of these include the Immigration Act of 1917, the Immigration Act of 1924, The Bracero Program of 1942-1964, Operation Wetback, The Oriental Exclusion Act, The McCarren Walter Act, and the Temporary Quota Law of 1921(Plesser 2-3,10-11,13,16,38-42,65). ...
