On last week's show, we took up the subject of "self-deportation," the new, supposedly gentler anti-illegal immigration movement that’s been embraced by various Republican presidential hopefuls, including Mitt Romney. In our report we credited Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach with inventing “self-deportation.”
But we were reminded by a twitter feed that he was not the first person to come up with this idea.
In fact, the concept can be traced to the mid-1990's. That’s when a group called “Hispanics Against Liberal Takeover” (HALTO) started running tongue-in-cheek political ads in California, calling for the self-deportation of all illegal immigrants in the United States.
At the time, the founder of HALTO, a Mexican-American called Daniel D. Portado, came onto our very own radio show in November 1996 to promote this idea.
Daniel D. Portado: We feel that the immigrants are taking too many jobs, are bringing down the quality of life. They're not allowing our young American teenagers the character-building experiences of picking fruit and cleaning hotel beds.
The New York Times and Rachel Maddow also reported on the comic roots of "self-deportation."
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