NATION : Derwinski: ‘Wetback’ Was Slip

Veterans Affairs Secretary Edward J. Derwinski said today that it was “just one of those dumb slips” when he used the term wetbacks to refer to illegal Latino immigrants. He said the Republican congressional candidate he was campaigning for at the time overreacted in denouncing him.

“Candidates panic, and they have thin skins,” said the former Illinois congressman. “She’s running hard and running uphill. . . . That’s understandable.”

Derwinski was in Omaha helping out Ally Milder, the Republican candidate for the House seat of Democrat Peter Hoagland, when he made the “wetbacks” remark on Friday.

“I just volunteered that one of the problems with drugs is they’re so easy to smuggle and that therefore curing addiction in the long run was the way we had to go,” Derwinski recalled. “And then I just got so carried away with my subject that without even thinking of exactly what I said, I said the drug cartel even uses wetbacks to get drugs into the country.”

Derwinski said he had not realized what he had said. “The first opportunity, I apologized. . . . I said, obviously, it was a dumb mistake. . . . It was an inadvertent, almost unconscious comment,” he said.