[ahlatimer]

There wasn't? There's been an illegal immigration problem in the States since we started clamping down on immigration. There was a large problem with Chinese immigrants in the late 1800's, early 1900's. In fact, El Paso (my hometown) was a focal point of that as well.

For a large part of the history of El Paso, Juarez (our sister city across the border) and El Paso flowed naturally. There wasn't really much of a divide between the two cities, up until the 1920's when a fear of lice caused Mayor Tom Lea to cut back on immigration which eventually spawned the Bath Riots. Even still, it wasn't really difficult to get into El Paso as a Hispanic individual. You simply had to go through a delousing process (designs of which Hitler used to exterminate the Jews) that sprayed you with Zyklon B and steam bathed your clothing. Not exactly the most honoring thing to go through, but you were still permitted access afterwards.

You could say there was even illegal immigration starting during the Mexican revolution when the States became a launching point for some of the revolutionaries. The U.S. still had this idea of neutrality and wanted those people to stay out. They came in anyway.

Flash forward to the WWII era and you have a program (I forget the name) that brought in Mexican citizens to work in the U.S.

So...you saying that there wasn't a problem until the 60's is simply misguided on one hand (there wasn't a problem because a lot of people were largely encouraged, or at least not stopped, from coming in) or horribly wrong on the other (there's been illegal immigration in this country since the quota system was introduced).

Like I said, you sound like someone who doesn't know jack about this subject. You're obviously entitled to your opinions, but your opinions are still wrong.

[kingkongrevenge]

I'm afraid you are trying to mislead. No, a large pool of undocumented mexican labor was not coming to the US to live and work. Not until the late 40s, anyway. Then the problem was solved until the late sixties.

Talking about the ease of crossing the border in El Paso is irrelevant to the question of whether large numbers of people were illegally finding work in the US.

The Chinese you talk about were episodically shipped out en masse. Kind of makes my point more than yours.