Speech #820170259

Chairman. S. 1851 as we are considering it on the floor today. purports to be an answer to the demand voiced by the Government of Mexico that the United States take decisive steps to close our borders to the flow of Mexican citizens who stream into southwestern United States seeking work on our farms. It purports to comply with the Presidents demand that our Immigration Service be given the enforcement tools it needs to cope with the hundreds of thousands of socalled wetbacks who cross the Rio Grande and other border points each year to add to our swollen migrant farmlabor population and to fan out into industrial areas throughout the country. S. 1851. in its present form. will do neither of these jobs in the way that they should be done. As originally introduced in the Senate in S. 1851. and as originally provided in section 274 of H. R. 5678. the omnibus immigration bill which thz House will consider shortly. the legislation contained the teeth necessary to really bite into the problem. But. as passed by the Senate. so much dental surgery has been applied that the measure cannot begin to do the job it should do. It cannot begin to clean up the stinking cesspools of human misery which we are now tolerating within our borders. It cannot begin to dry up the traffic in human flesh. the bottomless pool of cheap labor. which is the source of the shameful condition we now have throughout the Southwest. in California. in many of the Southern States. and which continues to spread like a cancer. This bill now contains no effective search procedure for rooting out illegal aliens. Further. it goes out of its way to make a special exception of the one circumstance and one group which contributes more than anything else to the growth of the vicious peonage system resulting from the swarming of wetbacks into the United States. It is the willful desire to create this miserable peonage that is the cause of our failure to control entry into the country by its potential victims. And it is the very group responsible who are singled out for special consideration in S. 1851. I refer to the employers of illegal aliens. for the most part the large farmers of the Southwest who knowingly encourage the traffic and build it up. and now have the temerity to ask that their practices be exempt from penalty. and that their lands not be subject to any effective method of ferreting out the poor humans whom they are exploiting. It is these large scale farmers who send their emissaries into Mexico to advertise the blessings lying across the border. and even make arrangements for their entry. or who deal with socalled labor contractorsthe modern version of the slave traderto provide them with the number of hands they need and no questions asked. These are the people who use the wetbacks as they need them. pay thcm little or in some cases nothing. and then turn them out to live in the ditchbanks and to starve.