“Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it.”
— George Santayana
Recently I lectured on the 1930’s Mexican Repatriation to a group of educated baby boomers. The group was unfamiliar with the topic because it was not covered when they went to school. A more recent textbook survey found that the incident remains largely uncovered.
The Mexican Repatriation saw the deportation of up to 1 million people of Mexican descent to Mexico. Sixty percent of the deportees were American citizens and most were children born in the United States. The term “repatriation” is a misnomer because American citizens were coercively deported to a foreign country.
President Herbert Hoover believed deportation would reduce Depression-era unemployment because “aliens” would no longer compete for jobs with native-born Americans. It was falsely alleged that Mexican-Americans disproportionately depended on welfare. Nativists believed the non-Anglo, Catholic culture of Latinos was un-American. Mexican-Americans were cast as aliens in territory they had occupied for centuries.
Police raids, incarceration and discrimination were used to coerce American citizens to “self-deport.” Due process was ignored, families were separated, property was confiscated and human rights were violated. Historian Carey McWilliams labeled repatriation a “getting rid of the Mexican scheme.”
Antipathy toward immigrants is a recurring theme. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 explicitly prohibited Chinese immigration, and the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 prevented “racially inferior” Eastern European Jews, Italians, Arabs, East Indians and Slavs from entering the country. President Trump, John Kelly and Joe Arpaio have characterized immigrants from Muslim nations, Africa and Latin America as threatening, inferior and deviant.
Three words define our immigration history. Nativism is the ideology that people born in the United States are more valuable than immigrants; racism is the unscientific theory that one “race” is superior and should dominate; xenophobia is a fear of people from different cultures. These words recede during stable periods, but they are reverberating today. Three factors are key.
Politics: Demagogues demonize immigrants to manipulate the public. Some Americans feel dispossessed and grow anxious when growing numbers of immigrants enter the country. The immigration policies enforced today, such as mass sweeps and ethnic profiling, are similar to those implemented in the 1930s.
Demographics: The concern over Mexican immigration is exaggerated. Net migration has turned negative as more Mexican nationals return to Mexico and fewer migrate to the United States. Asians are the only major population group increasing due to immigration. Hispanic and Asian populations are growing due to their youthful age structure and natural replacement. By mid-century, Hispanics will comprise 30 percent of the population, and no single ethnic group will constitute a majority.
Artificial Intelligence: Artificial Intelligence is transforming employment in services, manufacturing, legal professions, transportation, finance, government and education. This transformation will generate major job losses.
Emma Lazarus, a descendant of Jewish immigrants, wrote: “Give me your tired, your poor … the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” This inscription on the Statue of Liberty welcomed a Syrian refugee, Abdulfattah Jandali. He was the biological father of Apple founder Steve Jobs. Lazarus, Jandali and Jobs embody the American immigrant spirit.
Young workers from Mexico can help fund Social Security by working in the agricultural and service sectors. Skilled engineers from Mexico can address labor shortages in technology. Our attitudes and policies discourage potential immigrants from migrating to the United States. We must learn from history to stop repeating past mistakes.
