A friend of mine just wrote in his blog that BIDEN’S Climate Czar John Kerry is proposing to reduce greenhouse gas emission by taxing cow farts. This is about as effective as using an eyedropper to purify the oceans. Back in 2009, Obama proposed a special tax be placed on all cattle as a way to reduce methane gasses being emitted by cows. Where in the world do these guys come up with these ideas? What John Kerry has omitted to tell us is that modern dairy farms capture cow produced methane to power their milking barns. If anything is an example of going green that is a big one. Leave the problem to the American entrepreneur and he will find a profitable way to solve it, as did the dairy farmers. The Left doesn’t believe in entrepreneurship. They only believe in inventing new ways to destroy capitalism.
I believe that when someone proves to me that John Kerry abstains from beef, and eats only bugs to get his protein then I too will consider giving up beef.
For the fourth time this year I left the house without my wallet. On previous occasions I left my car keys home too. As luck would have it, my wife was with me and the extra key is in her purse. Since the Death Star is a push button start it was her key that started the car.
This time, I was on my way to the post office to buy stamps and to mail some letters. I grabbed my ass pocket as I left the car for the PO door and felt ass, no wallet. I turned around and red-facedly admitted my error.
Is this the way Alzheimer’s begins with little things like forgetting car keys? I recall some of the early incidents with Peggy and they were similar in nature. She began to forget little things. Once I found her staring at the controls of the washing machine, she was afraid to touch the buttons for fear of breaking the machine. This came from a woman who used a washing machine every day for over fifty years. When we stopped at a rest stop while traveling, she always asked me to wait for her right outside the lady’s room door, or a few feet away. She was afraid she would lose her way back to the car, little things.
On the face of my forgetfulness, I laugh at myself, but internally I fear for my life. I can’t imagine what I will do if I ever learn I have Alzheimer’s disease. My mother went through that process as well, and at first, we thought it was somewhat comical, but later came to realize that forgetting the little things can mean a lot. There isn’t much I can do about it if it does happen. I learned from Peggy’s experience that taking the miracle drugs recommended will only make me another kind of vegetable. In her case I chose to take her off the anti-seizure medicine and take my chances with the predicted outcomes. Her doctors kept preaching to me that if she has another seizure she may fall and injure her head and have a stroke. After living with her on the drugs for a month I decided for her best interest she will be happier without the stupid drug. By the time I made that decision she was not able to walk anymore and was living in a wheelchair. How does one fall out of a wheelchair? I learned it is possible but probably unlikely to happen. One day I found her leaning over the armrest of her chair, her head nearly touching the floor. I quickly got her a chair with devices that would restrain her from leaning out of the chair.
Miracle drugs are great when they work. They are not unlike computers that are great when they work, but when they fail all hell breaks loose. Currently, the world is speaking out against miracle drug makers because they rape us with charges for the drugs. All we see and understand is the money leaving our pockets and we don’t really care about the drug makers profit and loss statement. This, I believe is very communist thinking.
I sound like a broken record when I keep telling my story about polio, also a virus. It was over twenty years before a vaccine was available. and we all relaxed when it became available. We didn’t argue that we didn’t want our kids to get it because it was against their first amendment rights. I remember getting vaccinated for measles, mumps, scarlet fever, chicken pox and other terrible killing diseases. My parents were happy that we were vaccinated. Another thing, I don’t recall anyone asking my parents if we wanted to be vaccinated, we were lined up at school and the health department nurse did the job. I thank them for taking the initiative to do what was best for me.
My wife and I are at odds with the COVID-19 vaccine. I have it and I am grateful, she won’t get it, and believes it to be another conspiracy to reduce world population. She watches a lot of European TV and reads a lot of European articles on the vaccine. If one person dies within a week or two of being vaccinated the whole world knows about it, but, there is not a whimper of news lauding the millions who have been saved. She tells me that women who have been vaccinated have been found to be unable to conceive. I see that as a benefit and a cost savings not having to buy birth control pills. Not to mention the fact why would a woman in her seventies be worried about conceiving?
In my time, I was vaccinated for measles, mumps, scarlet fever, diphtheria, chicken pox, and any number of killing viruses. I don’t remember my parents protesting that their first amendment rights were being violated. They were happy, that their kids were saved from a horrible death. I also don’t remember anyone asking them to allow the Health Department Nurse from coming into the school to give the vaccinations. I thank them for doing what was best for me.
Today, we have kindergarteners deciding they want to change gender. That one really blows my mind. There is nothing in the science to indicate that gender is changeable. You become what you are at the moment of conception. No amount of brainwashing will change that, nor will chemical inducement. Can you imagine a person taking drugs all his life to maintain his gender? It doesn’t make any sense to me. If you were born with a penis and testicles you are a male, if you were born with a vagina and clitoris, you are a female. That is nature. If you were born with a penis, testicles, and a clitoris, or with a vagina and a clitoris the size of a penis that is nature doing its thing, learn to deal with it. Don’t expect me to make laws that define you as a special gender with special inalienable rights that are different than the original inalienable rights you were deemed to have in 1776.
The bottom line is that in nature there are many anomalies, but those anomalies do not change the genus and species that they are found in. They are anomalies, just that. The Constitution reads “all men are created equal” which includes all the anomalies. There is no need for special laws or lobby groups for them all.
So, what does all this have to do with my forgetting my key? When a person gets Alzheimer’s disease they do not need special rights beyond those already on place. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t deny that person special treatment for his malady, his rights remain the same.
This whole gender issue reminds me of the movie Star Trek. In one scene Hans Solo is in a bar with creatures from all over the universe. Did he consider them to be different? He spoke to them as if they were human, even though they had weird noses, and ears, and appendages hanging from their bodies. Let us learn to live with it!
Yesterday I posted about Obama’s real son. Today I have to add more information regarding the Oregon shooter. Not only is he half black, half white he is a muslim sympathizer, and tried to leave the country to fight with ISIS in Syria. He is on the CIA watch list as a muslim sympathizer. Isn’t it amazing how the story shifted to the need for gun control laws? I have a suggestion, make all muslims and muslim sympathizers declare their faith on the background check and then refuse to sell them firearms.
Here are some of the facts on this guy from Oregon:
The Federal Security Services (FSB) is reporting today that an American black-Islamist terror suspect, who yesterday committed an act of mass murder in the State of Oregon (United States), had been included on a list of 87,000 “known/suspected” Islamic terrorists that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) refused last month to accept from the Federation due to its not being “politically viable in the present atmosphere”.
According to this report, the black-Islamist terrorist who committed this act of terror, Chris Harper Mercer, had previously been indentified by electronic intelligence specialists within the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) as being an Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) adherent after he had attempted to gain passage to Syria via Turkey during the first week of September, 2015.
By the Obama regime refusing to accept this terror list from the Federation, this report continues, Mercer was able to accomplish his terror act when yesterday he killed 9 people and wounded 7others at the Umpqua Community College prior to his being shot and killed by local US police forces.
Most critical to note about this FSB report is that where it ends, the mysterious, and hugely read, Russian publication Reedus (Ridus.ru) continues—and to fully understand this information one must note that Russian intelligence agencies (SVR/FSB) frequently use Reedus to put information into the public sphere that otherwise would have serious international consequences should the government be found to be behind it—thus giving Reedus its current status known as “a Kremlin resource” and an “agency of Orthodox journalism”. [Русский]
And the information relating to the black-Islamist terrorist Mercer “leaked” into Reedus by the SVR/FSB is, to say the least, shocking and disturbing–including that immediately after the Oregon mass shooting, his Internet personal profile was changed from his true identity as an ISIS/ISIL terror s…. [Русский]
Also important to be noted was Mercer’s association with the ISIS/ISIL terrorist Mahmoud Ali Ehsani, who is banned in Russia[Русский], and was one of only two of Mercer’s MySpace “friends” and who praises the Islamic State, calls for the killing of Jews and glorifies in pictures on his MySpace page his rapture of these terrorists.
With the true knowledge of Mercer being known as the black-Islamic terrorist he truly was, information which the Obama regime refused to accept from Russia, his mass terror act in identifying and killing Christians becomes immediately understandable.
As to why the Obama regime and their propaganda media lapdogs are disguising the truth from the American people about this horrific act of Islamic terror against them, especially to the families of the dead and wounded, it is not known—but shouldn’t really surprise anyone as that government has been nothing but a mountain of lies for years.
Source
IMAM OF OREGON’S BIGGEST MOSQUE TOLD MUSLIMS TO KILL AMERICANS
Written by Daniel Greenfield October 2, 2015 www.frontpagemag.com
Reposted from Sovereignty Unbound
A few years ago the Oregonian’s Helen Jung was whining about how the FBI was being mean to the nice Imam and his mosque.
The unexplained actions are aggravating the FBI’s already poor relationship with the mosque and fueling fear and frustration among Muslims that their house of worship appears to be once again in the government’s cross hairs…
In Oregon, Masjed As-Saber stands out for its traditional focus and charismatic imam, who urges worshippers to stay true to the vast library of strict Islamic teachings, down to the conviction that men and women shouldn’t trim their eyebrows.
Why that poor man. The FBI is persecuting him just because he opposes eyebrow trimming.
Kariye briefly mentioned in one sermon his concerns that nonorganic food is threatening people’s health.
Organic food… and murdering Americans. Why this Imam is so progressive.
The imam of Portland’s biggest mosque collected money from worshippers after 9/11, sending the Portland Seven to Afghanistan to fight against coalition forces, the U.S. Department of Justice alleges in its fight to deport the imam.
As religious leader of Masjed As-Saber, Kariye told several members of the plot that “Muslims should fight with fellow Muslim brothers of Afghanistan against Americans” and that this combat was a “righteous fight … legitimate jihad,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in an exhibit filed earlier this month in the immigration case.
Oregon clearly needs more Somalis and their Muslim scholars. Because of the eyebrow trimming and the terrorism.
This pResident’s solution to Islamic terrorism is to disarm law abiding citizens and import more Muslims into the country who have been vetted by the United Nations or not at all.
~~ http://www.politifake.org/image/political/1301/dont-disarm-the-face-tyranny-battaile-politics-1359588410.jpg” alt=”politics DON’T DISARM IN THE FACE OF TYRANNY” />
The purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to protect us against tyranny. This is one thing that this pResident fully understands.
Pray for the students and faculty murdered today on a gun free campus.
David DeGerolamo http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Ncrenegade/~4/6Z6eqdh_toc?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email” height=”1″ width=”1″ alt=”” />
Reposted from NCRenegade.
Oregon shooter vs. Obama’s ‘universal background check’ Started by Robert M
Written by Leo Hohmann
Christopher Harper Mercer
Christopher Harper Mercer
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms said at a press conference Friday that 13 firearms were recovered from the person and the residence of Oregon mass shooter Christopher Harper Mercer.
The 26-year-old who shot and killed nine people at Umpqua Community College Thursday before losing his own life in a shootout with police had legal possession of all the guns, the ATF reported.
The ATF said all the weapons were purchased legally, either by Mercer or his family members. Mercer was also wearing a flak jacket, which included five ammunition magazines.
President Obama has hammered on the theme that America is the only industrialized nation that has repeated mass shootings and he blamed “gun violence” on the nation’s lack of gun control. He has advocated “common sense” proposals such as a universal background check using a centralized database across the 50 states.
What this new information from ATF demonstrates is that the kinds of gun control that the prohibition lobby has been pushing, namely the “universal background checks,” would not have prevented the tragedy in Oregon, said Dave Workman, senior editor of TheGunMag.com.
“The shooter reportedly had a clean record, and according to the ATF, he purchased several of those guns,” Workman said. “All the firearms were legally purchased from a firearms dealer, so background checks would have been involved.”
Obama said he knew he would be criticized for trying to “politicize” the tragic shooting but said that exactly what needed to happen in order to rein in “gun violence.”
But none of the president’s gun restrictions would have prevented Thursday’s mass shooting at the community college, said Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president and founder of the Second Amendment Foundation.
“None of the gun control proposals that Obama or the gun control crowd are proposing would have stopped this terrible tragedy,” Gottlieb said. “They are being intellectually dishonest. They are also being dishonest calling for new ‘gun safety’ legislation. This has nothing to do with gun safety. They know that everyone supports gun safety so they are using that term to manipulate the debate.”
If the president and his allies are successful in exploiting the rash of high-profile shootings, what will happen is law abiding gun owners will be harassed by new laws while thugs like Mercer will continue to cause more sorrow and tragedy, Gottlieb said.
What Gottlieb, Workman and other gun rights advocates have repeatedly advised is that “no gun zones” are what encourage would-be killers to invade a public space such as a school and start shooting.
Umpqua Community College had one security guard who was unarmed.
“Gun control failed miserably here,” said Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America. “The murderer chose a gun-free zone. All but two of our mass murders since 1950 have taken place in gun-free zones.”
CBS and the Associated Press both reported the UCC campus is a gun-free zone, and quoted the college’s security policy, which states: “Possession, use, or threatened use of firearms (including but not limited to BB guns, air guns, water pistols, and paint guns) ammunition, explosives, dangerous chemicals, or any other objects as weapons on college property, except as expressly authorized by law or college regulations, is prohibited.”
According to NBC News, UCC had considered hiring armed security for the campus. School officials ultimately rejected the idea. According to retired UCC President Joe Olson, “We thought we were a very safe campus, and having armed security officers on campus might change the culture.” That “culture” now appears to have been changed, possibly forever.
Meanwhile, others were casting blame on the Republican Party and the National Rifle Association.
Andy Parker, whose daughter Alison was the Virginia television reporter shot to death on live TV in August, penned an emotional column for the New York Daily News, imploring lawmakers to pass responsible gun laws in the wake of a mass shooting Thursday in Oregon. “This has to stop,” he wrote, continuing with the following passage, picking up on Obama’s talking points of “common sense” measures, the exact same points hammered by billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Every Town Against Gun Violence.
“I was a Reagan Republican years ago. I have slowly watched the party devolve into something Reagan wouldn’t recognize today – nor would he be a part of it.
“Republican legislators across the country refuse to consider common sense measures to prevent the horrific gun violence that kills our loved ones each and every day. By refusing to act, they are aiding and abetting domestic terrorism.
“Shame on them for being the cowards that they are. Is the support of a fringe element of the NRA so important that they are willing to accept our children as collateral damage? We are at war in this country, and we must win – whatever it takes.
“When I heard about this shooting in Oregon, I thought, this can’t be. Not this soon. I knew it would happen again. We are a country with a strong gun culture. But I wasn’t expecting it to be this soon.”
I hate to jump on the band wagon on Donald Trump’s rhetoric about sending illegals back to where they came from, but the subject is vital to the survival of the United States. Dealing with illegals is not new. Three presidents before, Herbert C. Hoover, Harry S. Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower dealt with illegals from Mexico. None of these three signed laws that deported illegals, but their rhetoric was enough to cause a reverse migration to occur. Eisenhower, however, led Operation Wetback and deported two million illegals. It took several years, to carry out but he did it to nurse the USA back to normalcy after a prolonged war.
Whether or not Donald Trump can deliver on his promise to deport illegals remains in the future. History suggests that it can be done, but with great effort and cost. The question is whether the cost has a payback?
A friend sent me this article from the Denver Post. I looked it up, it is legitimate and unaltered.
WHAT IF THEY LEFT Considering the Denver Post is a very liberal paper I’m surprised they published this. This shows how the hiring of illegals is false economic practice.
Tina Griego is a Free-Lance reporter for the Denver Post. She writes some really good stuff and she is a strong advocate for LEGAL immigration Homework on issues is part of her make-up and fabric.
What if they left? Somebody really did their homework on this one. Best on the subject to date. It does not have a political slant to it, JUST THE FACTS: Not Democratic, not Republican, not liberal and not conservative!
What if 20 Million Illegal Aliens Vacated America? I, Tina Griego, journalist for the Denver Rocky Mountain News wrote a column titled, “Mexican Visitor’s Lament.” I interviewed Mexican journalist Evangelina Hernandez while visiting Denver last week. Hernandez said, “Illegal aliens pay rent, buy groceries, buy clothes. What happens to your country’s economy if 20 million people go away?”
Hmmm, I thought, what would happen? So I did my due diligence, buried my nose as a reporter into the FACTS I found below. It’s a good question… it deserves an honest answer.
Over 80% of Americans demand secured borders and illegal migration stopped. But what would happen if all 20 million or more vacated America? The answers I found may surprise you!
In California, if 3.5 million illegal aliens moved back to Mexico, it would leave an extra $10.2 billion to spend on overloaded school systems, bankrupt hospitals and overrun prisons. It would leave highways cleaner, safer and less congested. Everyone could understand one another as English became the dominant language again.
In Colorado, 500,000 illegal migrants, plus their 300,000 kids and grandchildren would move back “home,” mostly to Mexico. That would save Colorado an estimated $2 billion (other experts say $7 billion) annually in taxes that pay for schooling, medical, social-services and incarceration costs. It means 12,000 gang members would vanish out of Denver alone. Colorado would save more than $20 million in prison costs, and the terror that those 7,300 alien criminals set upon local citizens. Denver Officer Don Young and hundreds of Colorado victims would not have suffered death, accidents, rapes and other crimes by illegals. Denver Public Schools would not suffer a 67% dropout/flunk rate because of thousands of illegal alien students speaking 41 different languages. At least200,000 vehicles would vanish from our gridlocked cities in Colorado. Denver’s 4% unemployment rate would vanish as our working poor would gain jobs at a living wage.
In Florida, 1.5 million illegals would return the Sunshine State back to America, the rule of law, and English.
In Chicago, Illinois, 2.1 million illegals would free up hospitals, schools, prisons and highways for a safer, cleaner and more crime-free experience.
If 20 million illegal aliens returned ‘home,’ the U.S. economy would return to the rule of law. Employers would hire legal American citizens at a living wage. Everyone would pay their fair share of taxes because they wouldn’t be working off the books. That would result in an additional $401 billion in IRS income taxes collected annually, and an equal amount for local, state and city coffers.
No more push ‘1’ for Spanish or ‘2’ for English. No more confusion in American schools that now must contend with over 100 languages that degrade the educational system for American kids. Our overcrowded schools would lose more than two million illegal alien kids at a cost of billions in ESL and free breakfasts and lunches.
We would lose 500,000 illegal criminal alien inmates at a cost of more than $1.6 billion annually. That includes 15,000 MS-13 gang members who distribute $130 billion in drugs annually would vacate our country.
In cities like L.A., 20,000 members of the ‘ 18th Street Gang’ would vanish from our nation. No more Mexican forgery gangs for ID theft from Americans! No more foreign rapists and child molesters!
Losing more than 20 million people would clear up our crowded highways and gridlock. Cleaner air and less drinking and driving American deaths by illegal aliens!
America’s economy is drained. Taxpayers are harmed. Employers get rich. Over $80 billion annually wouldn’t return to the aliens’ home countries by cash transfers. Illegal migrants earned half that money untaxed, which further drains America’s economy which currently suffers a $20 trillion debt. $20 trillion debt!!!
At least 400,000 anchor babies would not be born in our country, costing us $109 billion per year per cycle. At least 86 hospitals in California, Georgia and Florida would still be operating instead of being bankrupt out of existence because illegals pay nothing via the EMTOLA Act.
Americans wouldn’t suffer thousands of TB and hepatitis cases rampant in our country – brought in by illegals unscreened at our borders.
Our cities would see 20 million less people driving, polluting and grid locking our cities. It would also put the ‘progressives’ on the horns of a dilemma; illegal aliens and their families cause 11% of our greenhouse gases.
Over one million of Mexico’s poorest citizens now live inside and along our border from Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego, California, in what the New York Times called, ‘colonias’ or new neighborhoods. Trouble is, those living areas resemble Bombay and Calcutta where grinding poverty, filth, diseases, drugs, crimes, no sanitation and worse. They live without sewage, clean water, streets, roads, electricity, or any kind of sanitation.
The New York Times reported them to be America’s new ‘ Third World ‘ inside our own country. Within 20 years, at their current growth rate, they expect 20 million residents of those colonias. (I’ve seen them personally in Texas and Arizona; it’s sickening beyond anything you can imagine.)
By enforcing our laws, we could repatriate them back to Mexico. We should invite 20 million aliens to go home, fix their own countries and/or make a better life in Mexico. We already invite a million people into our country legally annually, more than all other countries combined. We cannot and must not allow anarchy at our borders, more anarchy within our borders and growing lawlessness at every level in our nation. It’s time to stand up for our country, our culture, our civilization and our way of life.
Interesting Statistics!
Here are 14 reasons illegal aliens should vacate America, and I hope they are forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that the reader gets sick of reading them:
1. $14 billion to $22 billion dollars are spent each year on welfare to illegal aliens (that’s Billion with a ‘B’)
3. $7.5 billion dollars are spent each year on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
4. $12 billion dollars are spent each year on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they still cannot speak a word of English
5. $27 billion dollars are spent each year for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
6. $3 Million Dollars ‘PER DAY’ is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens. That’s $1.2 Billion a year.
7. 28% percent of all federal prison inmates are illegal aliens.
9. $200 billion dollars per year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that’s two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US.
11. During the year 2005, there were 8 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our southern border with as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from other terrorist countries. Over 10,000 of those were middle-eastern terrorists. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin, crack, guns, and marijuana crossed into the U.S. from the southern border.
12. The National Policy Institute, estimates that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion, or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period. 13. In 2006, illegal aliens sent home $65 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin, to their families and friends.
14. The dark side of illegal immigration: Nearly one million sex crimes are committed by illegal immigrants in the United States! Total cost a whopping $538.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR!http://www.denverpost.com/ci_15247891
We drew these figures from official statistics published by the INS for each fiscal year. The Hoover figures are drawn from table 24A on page 179 of the “Annual Report of the Immigration and Naturalization Service” for fiscal year 1952. The historical table details numbers of “Aliens Deported and Aliens Departing Voluntarily Under Proceedings; Years ended June 30, 1892 to 1952.”
The fiscal-year figures don’t match Hoover’s term exactly, because fiscal years ended on June 30 in those years, and Hoover served from March 4, 1929, to March 4, 1933. So we added together totals for fiscal years 1930 through 1932 — the full fiscal years that fell entirely within Hoover’s term, plus pro-rated portions of fiscal year 1929 and 1933. For example, since Hoover was in office for 118 days of fiscal year 1929, we assigned to him 32.3 percent of the fiscal year totals.
For Truman and Eisenhower, we used the corresponding table (Table 23, page 55) from the INS annual report for 1961. We followed the same method for each to pro-rate figures for partial fiscal years. In the latter document “voluntary” departures are described instead as “Aliens required to depart,” a somewhat more accurate term.
The ‘Mexican Repatriation’
It’s true that the years of the Great Depression saw an exodus of many persons of Mexican heritage — including some who were U.S. citizens. A report in USA Today, published in 2006, stated: “Tens of thousands, and possibly more than 400,000, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were pressured — through raids and job denials — to leave the USA during the Depression.” That report echos the findings of a 2006 book, “Decade of betrayal: Mexican repatriation in the 1930s,” by Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez. Those authors described “a frenzy of anti-Mexican hysteria” that included “mass deportation roundups and repatriation drives.”
It is also true that federal immigration officials sometimes used legally dubious tactics in those days. A report to the 1931 Wickersham Commission, taking note of some “objectionable features” of the deportation system, described immigration officials “forcibly detaining groups of people many of whom are aliens lawfully in this country, or even United States citizens, without any warrant of arrest or search.” The report added: “It is often customary for the immigrant inspectors to jail suspects, however apprehended, without a warrant of arrest or any other kind of a warrant.” And it concluded, “The apprehension and examination of supposed aliens are often characterized by methods unconstitutional, tyrannic, and oppressive.”
But it should be noted that it was Hoover who appointed the commission that brought these abuses to light, and that the descriptions of a “Mexican repatriation” during the Depression don’t put the blame exclusively, or even predominately, on federal officials. They also cite actions by state and local officials, “job denials” by private employers, and pressure by labor unions. In fact, historian Ngai told us in an e-mail message that Mexicans who were sent back “were repatriated by local city and county welfare authorities (e.g. Los Angeles, Detroit), not the federal government.”
Hoover archivist Schaefer backed that up in his message to us, saying that Hoover himself did not push for deportation:
Hoover archivist Schaefer: The push for deportation arose locally. Los Angeles and California are probably the best known cases. LA paid transportation costs to ‘encourage’ ‘voluntary repatriation’ succeeding in sending tens of thousands of people back to Mexico in 1930 and 1931.
Hoover thought the very idea of restricting immigration from Mexico was futile, Schaefer said. “Hoover saw quotas for immigrants from the Western Hemisphere as unenforceable, so he opposed efforts to secure such quotas.”
Truman
The claim about Truman is also not supported by the historical record. According to Tammy Kelly, archivist at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, Mo.: “We have not found evidence that President Truman deported over two million illegal immigrants to create jobs for Americans.”
Truman struggled with the problem of migrant farm workers — both legal and illegal. On June 3, 1950, he set up a Presidential Commission on Migratory Labor and asked it to look into (among other things) “the extent of illegal migration of foreign workers into the United States” and whether laws could be “strengthened and improved to eliminate such illegal migration.” The commission ultimately recommended that the country should rely primarily on domestic farm workers, not immigrants, to perform farm labor. On July 13, 1951, Truman approved legislation to facilitate the employment of legal migrants to harvest U.S. crops, but also expressed a desire to reduce illegal immigration from Mexico and said additional measures were needed. “These people are coming to our country in phenomenal numbers – and at an increasing rate,” Truman said. “Everyone suffers from the presence of these illegal immigrants in the community.”
But the legislation Truman signed had to do with keeping legal guest workers flowing across the border to harvest U.S. crops. According to Truman archivist Kelly, the new legislation established reception centers to house temporarily legal immigrants from Mexico while the government found employment for them. Truman said in signing it, “We must make sure that contract wages will in fact be paid, that transportation within this country and adequate reception centers for Mexican workers will in fact be provided.” He said it was necessary that the U.S. government “stand behind all contracts and guarantee performance in the future, if any more Mexican citizens are to be legally recruited for work in the United States.”
It’s true that many were deported or induced to return “voluntarily” during the Truman years. We figure, based on the official historical tables, that more than 127,000 were formally deported and more than 3.2 million left voluntarily rather than face deportation — a total of nearly 3.4 million.
But the deportations and quasi-voluntary departures had nothing to do with creating jobs for returning veterans, as claimed in the chain e-mail. As Truman noted in a news conference on Oct. 3, 1946, most returning WWII veterans were quickly absorbed into the booming postwar economy. “Ten million veterans are gainfully employed today, compared with only 2 million at work on V-J Day–a gain of 8 million jobs for veterans in a year,” Truman boasted. He said 900,000 veterans remained unemployed, and that “is still higher than any of us like to see it.” But he drew no connection with illegal immigration.
Truman actually wanted to do more than he was able to stem illegal immigration. He said the bill he signed didn’t go far enough. He said he would ask Congress for stricter sanctions against employers who harbor illegal aliens, and would also seek clear authority for INS inspectors to raid workplaces without search warrants. “Congress did not pass the legislation Truman wanted, however, and the illegal immigration problem was passed onto future generations,” Kelly stated to us via e-mail.
Eisenhower
Truman’s successor pushed harder, presiding over what was officially called “Operation Wetback,” a vigorous, federally led effort to remove illegal Mexican immigrants from the Southwest. (The term “wetback” is a disparaging term applied to Mexicans who swam or waded across the Rio Grande River — and today is considered an ethnic slur.)
But it’s simply not true that “Eisenhower deported 13 million.” The actual number expelled by “Operation Wetback” is no more than one-tenth of that figure, even counting many who were not formally deported at all. “The claim that Eisenhower deported 13 million immigrants must be the result of a typo or some other error,” USCIS historian Smith told us. Since the officially claimed figure was 1.3 million, it is possible that the e-mail’s author simply dropped a decimal point, inflating the figure ten-fold.
The “Handbook of Texas,” sponsored by the Texas State Historical Association, says in its entry on “Operation Wetback” that the number forced to leave is “probably less than 1.3 million”:
Handbook of Texas: The INS claimed as many as 1,300,000, though the number officially apprehended did not come anywhere near this total. The INS estimate rested on the claim that most aliens, fearing apprehension by the government, had voluntarily repatriated themselves before and during the operation. … Many commentators have considered these figure[s] to be exaggerated.
We also contacted the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene, Kansas. Director Karl Weissenbach told us his staff had researched the library’s holdings to determine the veracity of the 13 million claim and could find nothing to support it. Indeed, the staff turned up a report to Cabinet dated Jan. 26, 1955, that suggests a much lower total:
Report to the Cabinet, Jan. 26, 1955: [A] year ago the Border Patrol was faced with the disheartening task of apprenhending and expelling some 3,000 ‘wetbacks’ each day, apprehensions now are running slightly less than 300 daily.
“Operation Wetback” lasted only a few months. It was announced June 9, 1954, and focused initially on California and Arizona. According to the 1954 Annual Report of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, (page 31) federal officials set up roadblocks and stopped trains at points at some distance north of the border. Some 800 Border Patrol agents, using jeeps, trucks, automobiles and spotter airplanes, used a system described officially as “blocking it off and mopping it up.” Agents quickly expanded the operation to the entire state of California, including industrial areas as well as agricultural areas. By mid-July, 1954, the operation was extended to Texas. And it eventually encompassed “mopping up” activities in northern cities as well, according to the 1955 Annual Report of the Immigration and Naturalization Service:
INS, 1955: These activities were followed by mopping up operations in the interior and special mobile force units are continuing to discover illegal aliens who have eluded initial sweeps through such cities as Spokane, Chicago, Kansas City and St. Louis, which removed 20,174 illegal Mexican aliens from industrial jobs.
Mexican nationals were shipped back using trucks, buses, planes and ships. According to the Texas State Historical Society, the use of ships was discontinued after some drownings caused a public outcry in Mexico.
Handbook of Texas: Ships were a preferred mode of transport because they carried the illegal workers farther away from the border than did buses, trucks, or trains. The boat lift continued until the drowning of seven deportees who jumped ship from the Mercurio provoked a mutiny and led to a public outcry against the practice in Mexico. Other aliens, particularly those apprehended in the Midwest states, were flown to Brownsville and sent into Mexico from there.
The ‘Problem No Longer Exists’
As we said, the operation lasted only a few months, not the “two years” claimed in the e-mail message. “The operation trailed off in the fall of 1954 as INS funding began to run out,” according to the Texas State Historical Society. Nevertheless, INS officials later claimed the operation had been a complete success and that the U.S.-Mexico border “has been secured.”
INS, 1955: The so-called ‘wetback’ problem no longer exists. … [T]his is no longer, as in the past, a problem in border control. The border has been secured.
More than half a century later, history has shown that official claim to be a fantasy, just like nearly all the claims made by this chain e-mail. In fact, about the only true statement in it is that “we never hear about” the events it describes. That’s because they never happened.
— Brooks Jackson
Sources
U.S. Department of Justice, “Annual Report of the Immigration and Naturalization Service” Table 24A. “Aliens Deported and Aliens Departing Voluntarily Under Proceedings; Years ended June 30, 1892 to 1952.” 10 Nov 1952.
U.S. Department of Justice, “Annual Report of the Immigration and Naturalization Service” Table 23. “Aliens Apprehended, Aliens Deported, and Aliens Required to Depart; Years ended June 30, 1892 to 1961” 1961.
Koch, Wendy, “U.S. urged to apologize for 1930s deportations” USA Today. 5 Apr 2006.
Balderrama, Francisco E.and Raymond Rodríguez, “Decade of betrayal: Mexican repatriation in the 1930s” University of New Mexico Press. 2006.
Oppenheimer, Reuben “The Administration of the Deportation Laws of the United States; Report to the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement” (Wickersham Commission) U.S. Government Printing Office. 1931.
Koestler, Fred L. “Operation Wetback” Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association Undated, accessed 30 Jun 2010.
Ngai, Mae M. Email message to FactCheck.org. 22 Jun 2010.
Weissenbach, Karl. Director, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. Email message to FactCheck.org, 11 Jun 2010.
Schaefer, Matthew T. Archivist, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library. Email message to FactCheck.org, 11 Jun 2010.
Kelly, Tammy. Archivist, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum. Email message to FactCheck.org, 11 Jun 2010.
Smith, Marian, Historian, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Department of Homeland Security. Email message to FactCheck.org, 25 Jun 2010.
Today is a day of recollection. After posting this morning I reread an older post titled From Proms to Dear Johns.That little piece of history concerned my high school love affair. At the end of it I promised to write about Steve Star at some point in the future. Today is the future.
Steve Star
My Grandpa Jim lived a solitary life on his little farm. To kill his loneliness and to make some extra beer money he took in a border named Steve Star, except his real name was Csillag Pista. Translated from Hungarian to English Csillag Pista becomes Steve Star. Steve worked doing labor in the pickle canning factory in Coloma near my Grand Father’s farm. Needless to say this is very seasonal work. Steve drove a very old Plymouth coupé, and drank cheap St Julian wine. He was a classic wino. I used his empty bottles piled high in the sand behind the barn for target practice with my 22 ca. rifle. He put them behind the barn to hide them from my mother who was anti-drinking on her watch. Steve was a drunk, stayed a drunk, and died a drunk. My mother had little effect on changing his habits.
After I got my Dear Joe letter in college I wallowed in a rut, and it showed. My friends began doing me favors by fixing me up with every girl that they could find. I resisted at first, but finally succumbed to my roommates tender of a string of dates from his fiance’s nursing school. It all began harmlessly as a series of letters to the girls suggested by friends that Steve Star take on a date. As a huge joke to myself I took the nom de guerre of Steve Star a hopeless cause. The letters became fodder for the school bulletin board, and unbeknownst to me, Steve Star became a mystery man who wrote stupid funny letters to the girls at Saint Anne’s. Eventually, Steve Star’s identity became known when I made a blind date with one of the girls during Christmas break.
It amused me when I sat in the parlor of Saint Anne’s waiting for my date to come down, and a nonchalant string of young nurses paraded through the room to look over Steve Star. The date went well, we had fun, and I got her back before curfew. I dated several more nursing students after that but not one rang Steve Star’s bell.
Later that year in July I had another blind date with a nurse who wanted to experience Steve Star. She was good-looking but not of model beauty. She stood about five-foot-four inches tall with short dark brown hair, and her waist was slightly thicker than the highly sought after women of the time. Her face was average, but she possessed uniquely sparkling dark brown eyes and a captivating smile. Her shapely ankles blended into calves formed like those of an athlete. She was off for the weekend so I picked her up at her home, and met her parents before she demurely descended the stairs.
Steve Star was a cheap skate and went on inexpensive dates, this time he enjoyed a Grant Park Concert on the lawn. The night was balmy, and the sounds of the cars passing by on the Outer Drive muted the precise sounds of the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra. We spent the night sitting on that blanket listening but mostly talking about school, and our families. Her father was dying of colon cancer, and she and her mother provided his care. She was the one who finally told me about the scene the Steve Star letters had on the nurses at Saint Anne’s. She had read all of them, as had most of the other girls in her class. A cool breeze drifted in from Lake Michigan as we folded our blanket to leave. I dropped her off and promised to call her at school.
My luck held out, and I dated another girl named Sabrina. Sabrina had the model beauty men sought after. Slightly taller at five six she had long jet black hair, and big black eyes with heavy mascara and eyeliner above and below the lids. Wow! We went to the movies and a snack. She confessed to reading Steve Star’s letters, and we kidded about his antics. I dropped her off on the front porch. I said goodnight and turned to leave, but she grabbed my arm and pulled me into the dark foyer for a goodnight kiss. The house was entirely dark and quiet. Steve’s mind shifted to more kissing, but she gently pushed him away and whispered “my parents and six brothers are asleep we don’t want to wake them.” I very quietly got the hell out of there.
Girl number one
In the meantime, Steve had called his first blind date (Girl number one) and was becoming very comfortable talking with her. She with him as well. We dated again, and the subject of Steve Star dating Sabrina came up. Steve sensed danger and dropped the subject quickly; he got the message.
Steve Star dated Barbara exclusively for the next two years until he married her. He remained faithful “until death do us part.”
