Last week, State reprsentative Russell Pearce, in a debate show on the local NPR station, argued for a return of a mass deportation program. He cited "Operation Wetback", as an example of a successful mass deportation effort on that part of the government. (Go to this:
http://kjzz.org/... to listen to the actual debate.)
Pearce's reference to the Operation has caused controversey for the Reps use of the derogratary term against Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Personally, as a historian and a person of Mexican and American Indian descent, I was not offend by the term since it is historically acuurate. I am offended by the belief that this was a "succesful" program. Americans were rounded up alongside undocumented individuals and deported to Mexico.
Pearce, is a rapid immigrant basher here in Arizona. While he used the term in an historically accurate way, I imagined that he has been seething at the mouth to call Mexican people that term. By qouting the program, it allowed him the opportunity to speak the word with some sort of "cover." In the following link:
http://www.azcentral.com/...
Included in the link above are Republicans scrambling to distance themselves from this political deadweight and those who are trying to claim that what this republican said is no worse than what Democrats say.
This is the end result when we allow this immigration debate to descend into the muck and allow nutjobs to control this debate instead of refocusing it on the destruction of the middle class as part of the neocon agenda since Reagan.