[Edward64]

Originally Posted by miami_fan

My point was more of a general one not just limited to the Bracero program. But if you just wanted to limited it to just that I can. Here are a few.

1. The farmers were so outraged about the country being riddled with illegal aliens, they chose not to participate in the legal program preferring to hire illegal immigrants which they could pay less and treat worse. Oh yeah, the government also knew this was happening but as the article kindly stated “Enforcement was lax.”

Yes, it did say that. No numbers given on how many hired illegals. But same paragraph said 4.5M entered legally through Bracero. For rough comparison, further down said there were about 2M illegal in the 1950s. Pretty significant distinction.

2. We rounded up illegal migrants who were supposedly “virtually an invasion”, took them to the border, made them take one step onto Mexican soil, handed them a visa and (according to other sources I have read on the program) took back to their places of employment in the U.S.

Yup. Operation Wetback or walk-around statute. Legal immigrants weren't affected and illegals were treated differently. Another distinction.

3. In 1951, AMERICANS called the U.S. Border Patrol a Gestapo outfit for taking away their workers or you know doing what they were suppose to be doing. In response, the INS commissioner basically made the legal immigration rules as easy and as cheap as possible allowing workers to hire those legal workers who everyone was screaming about being illegal the day before.

Another example where legal workers weren't affected and illegal were treated differently. Another distinction.

You can’t honestly look at those examples and still say the distinction between legal and illegal is one that was taken seriously. We accepted illegal immigration and made it legal.

From the examples, we did made "some" illegal workers legal through round about ways. The difference in treatment (back then) between illegal and legals is evident the distinction needs to be made.

Let me put it this way. If I was a legal immigrant back in the 50s. I would not want to be treated like the illegal immigrants in your examples. I would not have wanted to be clumped into that group.

I think your focus is on government & businesses somehow making illegals into legals. I can concede that point (although we don't really know the relative scale vs legals). But even with that, legal immigrants were not impacted adversely and presumably they were left alone to do what they wanted.