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I don't know about an 'official' closing of our borders, but I imagine there were very tight controls on who came into the country.... especially concerning certain nationalities from the Axis powers. Also, there was not the huge amount of international travel that we have today, and most cross-ocean travel was by ship. There were a lot fewer ports of entrance for immigrants, and much easier to control and monitor. I think cross border travel to Canada & Mexico was still possible by U.S. citizens, buy there may have been more restrictions. As for non-U.S. citizens, I don't know... perhaps not so easy.
Depends on what you mean as closed. Mexican workers did cross over to work in agricultural areas. They did so pre-war and more afterwards to replace males drafted during wartime.
Prior to Dec 7, 1941 the USA had been working on Latin American countries to observe and report German nationals.
I read a history of the Border Patrol a few years ago and patrols were maintained in likely areas of transit along the Mexican Border.
The more insular and homogeneous population of the Border- divided into American Anglo, Hispanic, Black, Indian made a German infiltration unlikely. Some German POWs escaped from a camp near Nogales and only made it a few miles to a small town before their un-American manner was reported.
That is what did in many a German spy parachuting into the UK- they could not fit in and were outed due to their manner. I wonder if a German attempt in 1944 when the UK metro centers had servicemen from all sorts of countries and cultures if a spy might be able to mix more seamlessly. I read but cannot attest to the veracity that one man dressed in a German uniform walked through a bustling part of London unnoticed due to the plethora of servicmen from other countries dressed in their unique uniforms.
There was another factor that has not been addressed.
If one is talking about migrant farm hands, then yes the Mexicans came and went.
If on the other hand, anyone is thinking of illegal immigration as is taking place today....
That did not occur on any significant level.
Why, you ask.
Virtually every "resident" of able body was being taken for military service.
Remember, the draft was not an "honor" only for citizens, residents were included in the "invitation".
As such, foreign nationals from non-participant or low participation nations in the war effort, were not likely to come to the U.S. where they could be forced into military service.
Further consider the moral outrage of parents and siblings who sent their son off to war, seeing an illegal walking about with no such obligation.
There was another factor that has not been addressed.
If one is talking about migrant farm hands, then yes the Mexicans came and went.
If on the other hand, anyone is thinking of illegal immigration as is taking place today....
That did not occur on any significant level.
Why, you ask.
Virtually every "resident" of able body was being taken for military service.
Remember, the draft was not an "honor" only for citizens, residents were included in the "invitation".
As such, foreign nationals from non-participant or low participation nations in the war effort, were not likely to come to the U.S. where they could be forced into military service.
Further consider the moral outrage of parents and siblings who sent their son off to war, seeing an illegal walking about with no such obligation.
I dare say people would have been outraged.
I think but am not sure that maybe the Zoot Suit Riots in LA had a bit of a source in the boldened above. Althought it was Servicmen unhappy at the Mexicans. Do not know if they were Mexican nationals doing well due to the wartime economy and flaunting or Americans of Hispanic[Mexican] ancestry who were not called up for Service doing similar.
I knew someone who was a Border Patrol officer during WWII and was stationed in the lower Rio Grande Valley. He said that due to farm labor shortages during the war they were instructed not to go onto private property to detain employed aliens and said he remembered passing by fields or citrus groves with hundreds of presumed "mojados" in them.
At the same time they were supposed to continue to apprehend illegal aliens at the point of entry or if they could track them down. He said that during the war the Mexican government was trying to keep their citizens from going to the U. S. to work, presumably because the higher wages were depleting the national labor pool, and posted soldiers along the Rio Grande to prevent them from crossing.
He said that one day he was concealed on the American side at a notorious crossing area and watched a lone Mexican soldier collecting money from a group of potential entrants to allow them to get in the rowboat that would carry them across the river. After everyone had paid up and the boat was pushing off the soldier laid his helmet and rifle aside and climbed in the boat with them.
Another acquaintance, a WWI veteran, had worked as a Customs Patrol officer since Prohibition and during WWII was stationed at Sasabe, Arizona, a tiny town on the border southwest of Tucson. At the end of the war he was detailed to guard German POW's and internees somewhere on the West Coast. He had a conversation with a German who if I remember correctly had been picked up by the Mexican government and turned over to the U. S. authorities. He told the Customs officer who was guarding him that he had been in Mexico as a spy for several years and that he had lived on the Mexican side at Sasabe and mixed in with the local population. They remembered seeing each other as he would bring horses to water alongside the border fence. I don't have any idea what his espionage activities consisted of.
They remembered seeing each other as he would bring horses to water alongside the border fence. I don't have any idea what his espionage activities consisted of.
Probably just socio economic obesrvations. The British had a small corps of gentleman scholars and businessmen who would travel through, and when possible, reside for business purposes in areas the British were interested in.
I read an account of one of them who surveyed Karelia in the 1850s at the order of the British government. Fluent in Finnish and assosciated dialects, and Russian, he turned in a wealth of information about the Russification of the area including the renaming of towns, villages, creeks and forests with Russian names, the introduction of Russian settlers, church services in Russian, education in Russian etc. He also made systematic obesrvations about mines, lumbering, navigable rivers, river port facilities, the presence of steam ships, or other steam equipment and the ethnicities and probable degree of training of the local imperial garrissons etc etc.
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