Por / By Robert Fuchs, Esq.
WHY IS THERE A SEPARATE IMMIGRATION SYSTEM
FOR LATINOS? (Part 2)
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Throughout the immigration history of our country, Europeans have always been treated favorably and Latinos treated prejudicially by the immigration laws. During the period of 1917 – 1951 the U.S. immigration quotas
were established & the visas allotments favored immigrants from Ireland, the United Kingdom and Germany; immigrants who already had relatives in the United States.
During that same period of time,
the U.S. had a mass deportation of
Mexicans and Mexican-Americans called the Mexican Repatriation where an estimated repatriation of Mexican people ranged from 500,000 to 2,000,000, of whom perhaps 60% were US citizens
by birth. During this time, the U.S. government also created the Mexican Bracero Program, which allowed Mexicans to work in the U.S. as farmers, but they would
not have the possibility of becoming a legal resident. As the attached pie charts show, the immigration laws were favorable with an open door policy when the immigrants were mainly European (1960’s), but have continued to get worse with immigrants mainly coming from Latino nations (2016).