Trump’s Gains With Latinos Echo Anti-Immigrant Sentiment of the Past

Growing Latino support for some of President-elect Trump’s harsh immigration policies is nothing new: Decades ago, anti-immigrant sentiment was the status quo among many Latino civil rights leaders.

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What they’re saying: Anti-immigrant sentiment among Latinos has existed since the 1930s, Brian Behnken, an Iowa State University history professor, tells Axios.

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Flashback: During the Mexican American civil rights movement of the 1950s, Latino civil rights leaders often pressed for deportations and limited migration over fear immigrants were depressing wages and taking jobs from poor Hispanic workers.

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Zoom in: The American G.I. Forum, a Latino organization, even published a pamphlet, “What Price Wetbacks?” with stereotypes about Mexican immigrants as it advocated for policies to stem illegal immigration. {snip}

• Its authors warned that an “invasion” was underway, one that posed “a threat to our health, our economy, (and) our American way of life.”

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The intrigue: Gus Garcia, a civil rights lawyer for the American G.I. Forum and for future President Lyndon Johnson, traveled to the White House in 1952 to demand the deportations of Mexican immigrants.

• Farmworker union leader Cesar Chavez also used the term “wetback” to describe undocumented immigrants and encouraged union workers to block Mexican immigrants from breaking strikes at the Arizona-Mexico border.

Yes, but: Beginning with the Chicano Movement and later the anti-immigrant proposals of the 1990s, Latino civil rights groups shifted to support undocumented immigrants who were facing discrimination and began pushing for comprehensive immigration reform.

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