USA 1986: Mass Deportation of Illegal aliens

If by Dukakis Presidency you actually mean Babbitt's or Gore's or Hart's ATL presidency, then that's entirely possible.

But this would be such a huge policy change that it almost certainly butterflys away any chance Mike has of just walking into the nomination. A Southerner or a westerner will have a better chance of winning the primaries as the guy who can 'fix Reagan's border mess'.
Perhaps. But Dukakis knew Spanish and he gave speeches in Spanish 'cause he was courting the Latino vote. Because of the border snafu, he could have cornered the Latino vote: being fluent in Spanish, ergo, Latinos would figure he knows their problems and respects their interests. And with that, he could have sewn up the nomination.
 
Perhaps. But Dukakis knew Spanish and he gave speeches in Spanish 'cause he was courting the Latino vote. Because of the border snafu, he could have cornered the Latino vote: being fluent in Spanish, ergo, Latinos would figure he knows their problems and respects their interests. And with that, he could have sewn up the nomination.

I don't think that Dukakis can just shore-up his candidacy and win the Dem presidential nomination with Latino votes, not in that era--and not if the political climate during Reagan's 'nights of the INS long knives'* has weakened the very rationale for his candidacy. Anyway, Jesse Jackson has a lot of (but not all of) the Latino activists in his Rainbow Coalition. I don't see him releasing his delegates to a weakened Northeastern candidate.

But there is one part of the Democratic Party that can make a nominee who is willing to appear to be firm on the border issue in this hypothetical '88 race. Organised labor. And they're not going to go with someone who looks like he might pander to the seemingly unimportant Hispanic vote.

They'll go with someone who can plausibly hedge his bets on the issue--Gephardt, Babbitt, Gore--not an ACLU liberal academic. So unfortunately you don't get Dukakis to kick around in that election**.


*Ugly rhetoric would be the tone of the season, in both parties, and in both pro- and con-deportation factions.

**Anyway, others here have convinced me that the issue isn't going to come to a head. The original poster is amiss when he fantasises about the Gipper signing an executive order that secures the border and busts all the bad guys
 
one big difference between the 50's and the 80's... our all pervasive media. Imagine the heyday they'd have reporting on this... every single person hurt or killed in the roundup, every person deported by mistake (which would be bound to happen), etc.... it would be a major PR nightmare...
 
Another issue to consider...

One thing that seems terribly racist about the immigration debate is that no one talks about the thousands of illegal immigrants from Ireland:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion...8,0,7661039.column?coll=la-opinion-columnists

Currently there are at least 50,000 Irish illegal immigrants in the United States, 30,000 in the immediate New York area. To the people advocating the wall on the Mexican border, how many would feel comfortable with police raiding the Irish neighborhoods across America for suspected illegal immigrants? To make matters worse, let's see how comfortable things are after prominent Irish-Americans from Bill O'Reilly to Edward M. Kennedy are accused of causing, "the world going into a depression because the U.S. is ravaged by a second civil war, or a collapsed economy, don't come complaining to me..."

Now before anyone accuses me of race-baiting, the issue I am trying to bring up is that people seem to think all illegal immigrants are a foreign "other" group. People seem to be less comfortable when the possibility of police intrusion into their neighborhoods becomes a possibility...
 
50,000 vs. millions.

Priorities.

Not to mention the US-Mexico border zone is a much more problematic zone than NYC.

Actually, I have some friends at WTC Plaza who could dispute your idea of NYC, NY not being problematic. Second, if you read the article, name me any other group wherein 3,000 illegal immigrants can go to Capitol Hill to lobby Congress about legislation with impunity. Something tells me if the United Farm Workers (UFW) attempted to do a similar lobbying effort, there would be arrests outside the Capitol....
 
Actually, I have some friends at WTC Plaza who could dispute your idea of NYC, NY not being problematic. Second, if you read the article, name me any other group wherein 3,000 illegal immigrants can go to Capitol Hill to lobby Congress about legislation with impunity. Something tells me if the United Farm Workers (UFW) attempted to do a similar lobbying effort, there would be arrests outside the Capitol....

9/11 was a onetime thing.

The porousness of the U.S. border (with units of the Mexican army coming across and shooting at Border Patrol agents and on one occasion abducting a U.S. citizen) is a different matter.

And something tells me UFW wouldn't be arrested either. I'm willing to bet a huge percentage of the "Si Se Puede" marchers a couple of years ago were illegal aliens and I don't recall roundups then.
 
9/11 was a onetime thing.

The porousness of the U.S. border (with units of the Mexican army coming across and shooting at Border Patrol agents and on one occasion abducting a U.S. citizen) is a different matter.

And something tells me UFW wouldn't be arrested either. I'm willing to bet a huge percentage of the "Si Se Puede" marchers a couple of years ago were illegal aliens and I don't recall roundups then.

Actually it happened twice at the WTC, lest we forget the 1993 WTC bombing....

As for the UFW getting arrested, they have always faced arrest since their formation in 1962. Just check out:

http://www.ufw.org/_page.php?menu=research&inc=_page.php?menu=research&inc=history/01.html

Furthermore, unlike the Irish illegal immigrants, the Mexican immigrants are more likely to face politically-motivated ICE raids, and threatened with deportation:

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=e5a3be40ba1f338650f2c0f793d11c3d
 
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