Anti-immigrant group Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) released its Fall newsletter this October, and predictably the focus was almost entirely on immigrants. Despite unrelenting criticism from civil rights groups, CAPS has stubbornly refused to shift, or even diversify its focus. The group’s leadership believes it occupies “a special niche in the population-environment movement.” But one has to wonder if a group entirely focused on bashing immigrants can be considered even an unconventional environmental group.
The newsletter features several inflammatory articles meant to spread harmful misconceptions about immigrants. One article, in particular, irresponsibly asserts that it is possible to deport “all” the undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. CAPS even goes so far as to say that past deportations in this country are examples to emulate, stating, “There were several successful mass deportations and exclusions in the U.S. in the last century.”… “Nearly 1 million Mexican citizens left the United States between 1929 and 1939 either through deportation, threat of deportation or protracted unemployment.”
CAPS’ article is referring to is what is commonly known as ‘the repatriation’ of people of Mexican ancestry that occurred in the early 1930s. Although the term is horribly inaccurate as many of the people ‘repatriated’ were actually U.S. citizens forced out as a result of a wave of xenophobia against immigrants. Far from being an example of legal deportation, it was in reality a campaign taken up by certain cities and counties to cleanse the U.S. of brown-skinned people.
Historians estimate that between 400,000 and 2 million people were forced across the border as a result of this effort, including an unknown but likely significant number of American-born citizens, as well as others living in the U.S. legally, who were targeted because of the color of their skin. It was a sordid time in American history, one that could easily repeat itself given the current climate in the country.
The Immigration Policy Center describes the process by which the U.S. later repealed some of the discriminatory legislation which encouraged these efforts:
World War II and its aftermath caused the United States to completely rethink its immigration policies. Far from being seen as a “pause” in immigration which allowed new immigrants to assimilate, those previous years of xenophobic and racist immigration policies were deemed inappropriate and often illegitimate actions for a nation that considered itself the leading democracy in the post-colonial, Cold War world. Step by step, the offensive laws were dismantled or revised. The first revision was the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943 by the Magnuson Act. Then, on July 2, 1946, Congress enacted the Luce-Cellar Act to extend naturalization and limited immigration rights to Asian Indians (since India was newly independent) and to Filipinos (who two days later were granted their independence by the United States). Total revocation of the Barred Zone Act occurred through the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (McCarran-Walter Act). However, this legislation retained the discriminatory national origin quota system and permitted only a very small annual quota of 2,000 for Asian Pacific immigrants.
As legislative history shows, the U.S. recognized and repealed at least some of the discriminatory laws that barred certain immigrants from becoming citizens and encouraged driving out those perceived as foreigners. Based on the grievous mistakes during this time and the countless freedoms that were trampled on, CAPS’ glorification of those injustices goes beyond insensitive.
Revising history to suit one’s own agenda is not only dangerous, it’s inexcusable.