What is happening at the Border between the US and Mexico?
1800s
Before we go into what is happening at the border currently we should go through the history of the border between the US and Mexico. The border was first established in 1848 when the Guadalupe-Hidalgo Treaty was signed. Ending the Mexican-American war it said that Mexico ceded 55% of its northern territories to the United States and relinquished its claim to Texas. Later in 1849 the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo established the Mexican-United States Boundary Commission to survey and mark the boundaries between the countries. The late 1840s and 1850s brought impasses in negotiations regarding making a physical border then in 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act became the first federal law proscribing entry of an ethnic working group on the premise that it endangered the order of certain localities which meant that the Chinese are taking of the local life in certain areas. Lastly, in 1891-1894 The International Boundary Commission was created to resurvey and remark boundaries.
early 1900s
In 1911 the first-ever border fence was completed to keep cattle in Mexico due to a widespread cattle tick disease and in 1924 the Border Patrol was created to enforce the regulations along the border. During the Great Depression in the 1930s hostility toward immigrants increased as the Federal Government passed laws increasing restrictions and penalties for hiring immigrants also over 1 million of them were sent back to Mexico. In 1942 the U.S. and Mexico signed the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement aka the Bracero Program. Which managed Mexican guest workers in the U.S. In 22 years, 4.6 million contracts were signed which made it the largest U.S contract labor program. In 1954 Operation Wetback was created to deal with illegal border crossings by Mexican nationals into the U.S it has Border Patrol agents finding processing and deporting Mexicans that entered illegally.
Late 1900s
In 1965 The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 aka the Hart-Celler Act changed the way immigration quotas were allocated in the United States it also put a limit on how many people could immigrate from Mexican and Latin America. From 1982-1985 it all is how in 1982 the unemployment rate went up in Mexico during their economic crisis which pushed more immigrants to America to find jobs. In 1985 foreign countries had factories making goods for the U.S. market and the alien population was estimated to be nearly 5 million. In 1986 the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) law increased border security and established penalties for employers who hired unauthorized immigrants. In the 1990s there were three called Operations Hold-the-Line, Gatekeeper, and Safegaurd. The first was Operation Hold-the-Line which was in El Paso and had four hundred agents and vehicles stationed every 100 yards to stop illegal crossings. The Second is Gatekeeper and Safegaurd did the same thing as the first operation but just in different locations Gatekeeper being in San Diego and Safeguard being in Arizona.
2000s
In 2006 the Secure Fence Act law allowed the construction of hundreds of miles of adding fencing along the border. In 2015 the U.S. government completed the 652-mile-long border fence. In 2016 the number of immigrants in the U.S. decreased by 300,000. In 2018 the Central American Migrant Caravan was more than 7,000 undocumented Central American immigrants walked through Mexico to the U.S.-Mexico border trying to cross into the U.S. fleeing persecution and extortion by criminal gangs or the economic conditions in their home countries.
Currently
In 2021 the U.S. Border Patrol saw the highest number of illegal immigrants on record with Texas taking the influx of illegal immigrants which is depleting their local law enforcement. Also in 2021, Governor Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star which deployed the Texas National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety to the southern border. They repealed illegal crossing, arrested human smugglers and cartel gang members, and stopped the flow of deadly drugs into our country.
Do you think the government has done a good job of keeping illegal immigrants out of the U.S.?
Do you agree with the government's way of keeping immigrants out of the country?
Do you agree with Texas's actions at the border?
https://www.smu.edu/dedman/research/institutes-and-centers/texas-mexico/about/timeline
Replies
I agree with what you said because it is important to keep out people who don't legally belong here because there is no real way to know what they could or would do in America when they are not processed.
The government has literally done anything to keep illegal immigrants out of the U.S. Some of these things are fine but others are very bad. I think these laws are ok and illegal immigrants should follow them. There is obviously a difference between the illegal and the legal immigrants, people tend to forget about this and mistreat both, which is wrong. Immigrating illegaly is wrong, calling every immigrant, spanish-speaker an illegal is also wrong and disrespectful. People should try to understand what immigrants are going through and why they move.
Yes, I do agree that the government has done anything to keep immigrants out but at the same time, they have done some bad stuff to the immigrants. But at the same time, immigrants bring a lot of drugs into our country which kill Americans every year.
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