THE HISTORY BEHIND THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE

(Ed’s. Note: In the account below, the author recounts the experience of the Bracero Program from 1942 to 1964. As political correctness did not exist then, the authors of publications of the day openly used the term “wetback”. Despite our objection to the use of the term to refer to human beings, we use it sparingly in an effort remain accurate to the work. This article first appeard in the Cameron Post.)

By Juan Montoya

PART I

BROWNSVILLE – As the national furor over the issue of immigration intensifies, it is interesting to look back at recent history when the United States and Mexico had an international agreement on labor to bring Mexican workers to the Southwest.

In a book published in 1953, Ed Idar, Jr., the executive director of the G.I. Forum and Andrew C. McLellan, a Starr County businessman and investigative reporter, researched the effect of the agreement on Texas border communities.

Their report titled “What Price Wetbacks?” was supported by Idar’s G.I. Forum and the Texas State Federation of Labor (AFL) and was an indictment against the results of the program.

In a nutshell, the report outlines the reason for the program’s implementation, the results the importation of laborers on domestic workers, and the human and social conditions that braceros and illegal workers faced in South Texas.

Their report focused on the Bracero Program that was in place from 1942 to 1964.

Yet, the relationship between U.S. capital and Mexican labor goes much further back. Although Mexican migratory labor to the Southwest has existed since the 1850s, it was Chinese labor that first filled the labor hole in agriculture in the mid 19th century. Nearly 200,000 Chinese were legally contracted to cultivate California fields.

The need of U.S. employees to import foreign manual labor was heightened first by the expansion of cattle ranches in the region, and then by the increase of fruit production in California in 1850 and 1880.

After the U.S. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese labor replaced the Chinese in the fields. Conditions for these workers were generally very poor. Between 1850 and 1880, about 55,000 Mexican workers immigrated to the United States to become field hands in regions that until 1848 belonged to Mexico.

Commercial agriculture, mining, light industry, and of course, the railroad, all worked to lure labor to the southwest.Events in Mexico – including the Mexican Revolution in 1910 and a ravaged agricultural base – all worked to fuel the migration north.

When World War I broke out, that stream turned into a torrent as the demand for able-bodied workers peaked in agriculture as well as the industry and service fields, the trades (machinists, mechanics, painters, and plumbers), and diverse sectors of the labor market in the United States.

Agencies in Mexico recruited for the railway and agriculture industries in this country. Partly as a result of the worker’s complaints about the bad treatment they received in the United States, the government of Venustiano Carranza in 1920 composed a contract that guaranteed the workers some basic rights framed along the lines of the Mexican Constitution.

This was the first de facto Bracero Program between the two countries. Not long afterward – in 1924 – the U.S. Border patrol was created and signified a qualitatively different view of this relationship by the U.S. government. The law now stated that undocumented workers were fugitives from the law. With the advent of this definition, the term “illegal alien” was born.

During the Depression, the doors started closing on Mexican workers as unemployment rose and native-born U.S. citizens eyed the immigrants with suspicion and accused them of lowering wages. During this period, visas were denied to Mexican workers who failed to prove they had secure employment in the United States.

Once deported, they were subject to criminal prosecution if they returned and were apprehended.But just as WWI and its labor shortages led to the importation of Mexican workers, WWII fueled another large migration as American industries and agriculture demanded workers to make up the labor force left wanting because of the entry of U.S. workers entering the military forces. In 1942, as industry and manufacturers screamed for labor, the U.S. and Mexico entered into the Bracero Program.

END PART I

(Next: Part II, The Bracero Program and its aftermath).