"don’t give people welfare"

Operation Wetback, 1954

"Don't give people welfare ... don't give them any freebies."

 - Gabriela Saucedo Mercer

Gabriela Saucedo Mercer, a Mexican born emigrant and naturalized citizen of the United States, supports the deportation of ALL "illegal immigrants, including the mothers of citizens who were born in the U.S.," according to this item from Nogales International By Hank Stephenson.

“Most of the Latinos that I’ve talked to, Hispanics, Latinos, Mexican-Americans, whatever you want to call it, they don’t like it (illegal immigration) because they say, ‘Wait, illegal immigration is a problem in our country,’” Saucedo Mercer said. “We need to secure the border, we need to take control of it because it is killing our industry, and it is killing our country.” According to the report, which centered around her announcement to run for Congress, Mercer believes all “Hispanics share the same conservative values that I came here with from Mexico ... We believe in family, giving the best education to our children and taking care of each other.”

Apparently Mercer feels the best way to take care of each other is through massive deportations. In the Nogales International article, dated  March 6, 2011, she said the best way to solve the illegal immigration problem is through self-deportation, which the government can aid by eliminating public benefits for people here illegally, as [now former] Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce has proposed with his new “immigration omnibus” bill. 

“If they don’t have jobs, what are people going to do?” she asked. “If you don’t give people welfare, if you don’t give them any freebies, they’re going to say, ‘Well, I better stay in my country.’” 

In the Nogales article, Mercer "would not offer a solid yes or no on her support" for a constitutional change to the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to anyone born in the United States, but said she believes at least one parent must be a legal citizen for the child to be considered American. She said she would like Congress to take up the issue because, “(The meaning of the 14th Amendment) needs to be discussed.”  It's interesting to note that her position on the 2nd Amendment is precisely the opposite, so somehow one paragraph of the Constitution is deserving of review, but not another even in the tragic wake of senseless death and bloodshed.

With her aim to deny public benefits for undocumented immigrants, her approval of deporting all people in the county illegally and her support for SB 1070, her view appears more representative of a round-up approach not unlike what happened in the 1940s and early '50s, where Operation Wetback saw the systematic deportation of over 250,000 Mexicans, (as many as 1,300,000 by some estimates) from the southwestern United States.

Admittedly, she is unhappy with the way people behave when they do come to America. "We are losing our heritage," she says in her Restoring America Super PAC Vetting Form, "because people who immigrate here do not integrate into our society and culture."

Surprisingly, Mercer supported President Obama's granting deferment to hundreds of thousands of resident aliens in June of 2012, but not to the Executive Order itself. “While I do not object to the principles involved, I object to the methodology the Obama administration is using to implement their plan by circumventing the United States Congress,” she is quoted as saying in this Western Free Press article. This despite the fact that Executive Order has been a staple of presidential power since one of her favorite quotable quotables, John Quincy Adams, started using the process in 1826. Just as an aside, Ulysses S. Grant used Executive Order 11 times. In 1885, Grover Cleveland used it 23 times, while Dwight D. Eisenhower performed 8 Executive Orders in 1961.