Love, tolerance comes and goes

They love you until they don’t. Well, maybe not love but they will tolerate you.

That was what occurred to me when I read the following passage in an archived edition of The Chula Vista Star:

“In many areas of agriculture California the farm labor problem has advanced from the serious stage to the desperate.

“Crops are being wasted daily. There aren’t enough people on the farms to harvest…

“One suggested solution that seems feasible and acceptable to many farmers is the temporary importation of sufficient Mexican farm labor to save California’s crops.

“Normally invitation of farm workers of another nation and another standard of living would be unwise…but this is a time of war—and the plan could provide for prompt return of the Mexican farm volunteers to their home localities as soon as the emergency is over, with a share of their earnings earmarked for their use in repatriation.”

The editorial was published July 3, 1942, a time when Japanese people, including farmers, had been hauled off to internment camps, maiming local economies.

It was also slightly more than 10 years after Mexican and Mexican-Americans had been repatriated to Mexico during the Mexican Repatriation program introduced in 1929.

Sending Mexicans back, even U.S. citizens of Mexican descent, was the response to the notion that they were taking scarce and precious American jobs during the Great Depression. With fewer Mexican farmhands working the fields, more “Americans” would find gainful employment. Or so the reasoning went.

Thus Latinos were strongly encouraged to go back to where they came from and on some occasions forced—even if they had been born here.

Of course, that is ancient history. Until it’s not.

All these decades later we have another wave of anti-immigrant/Latino sentiment that is disrupting economies and harming communities.

But amid the chaos of deportations large agricultural interests are starting to grumble at the Trump Administration, complaining that raids are hurting their bottom line. There is talk of allowing exemptions, allowing some immigrants to stay. Recognizing their value to the economy and society.

They love you. Until they don’t.