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Bracero

In place between 1942 and 1965, the bracero [meaning "strong arm"] program allowed millions of Mexican men to come to work in the US on short term labor contracts. Many of these workers eventually settled and brought families to the US or married locals. The migration began as a joint effort between the governments of Mexico and the United States to ease the manpower shortage created by World War II, recruiting more than 4.9 million Mexican workers to work on US farms. Agriculture was the largest employer of bracero labor; in agriculture, bracero labor was frequently, substantially, but unevenly, supplemented by undocumented migrant labor from Mexico. California was the largest employer of bracero and undocumented labor. The bracero system marked a significant transformation of labor relations in agriculture California, which previously had relied on far less systematized labor market dynamics.

After the war, as "locals," American citizens and legal immigrants, returned from the military or defense industries, they sought the agricultural jobs they had held before the war. A conflict arose between the economic interests of agri-business and the civil rights and treatment of farm workers. Farm workers had not been covered by the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which provided industrial workers the right to form unions and enter into collective bargaining. Nor were farm workers covered under the 1939 Fair Labor Standards Act establishing a minimum hourly wage and maximum hours of work per week. Consequently, farm workers, who performed the most difficult work, worked the longest hours and received the lowest pay. They had no union to represent them or protect them from unscrupulous employers or corrupt labor contractors. Although Public Law 78, which had implemented the bracero program, clearly stated that "locals" had to be hired before Mexican nationals, grower associations, labor contractors and individual farmers found various ways to circumvent the law.

There were points of contention between the 2 countries: 1) in opposition to Mexico's policy of placing recruitment centers in the interior of the country, US policy called for placing the centers near the border, to reduce transportation costs; 2) Texas, which received no braceros because of racial discrimination, relied upon illegal aliens for manual labor; 3) Texas flagrantly violated a 1948 agreement when the Border Patrol welcomed aliens across the river despite Mexican officials' threats to close the border; 4) legal braceros were confronted with competition from illegals who were willing to work for a lower wage.

Dire needs of these migrants, and their willingness to work for wages scorned by native Americans, made them an attractive labor pool for southwestern and western agriculture. The unorganized drift of bracero labor became a vast administered migration that unfortunately also gave rise to many problems. It led to corruption and to the exploitation of human beings on both sides of the border. Congressional attempts to end the program came under pressure from American employers and the Mexican government to extend it for additional periods of time.

In 1954, the Border patrol physically helped aliens across the border, while Mexican policy were physically restraining them. With the conclusion of a new Bracero agreement in March 1954, illegal aliens were no longer needed, so more than 1 million were apprehended and deported to Mexico's interior.

In 1958, the Community Service Organization (CSO), founded by Fred Ross, Sr., sent César Chávez to Oxnard, California to organize the Mexican American community ("la colonia"), and to work with the United Packinghouse Workers of American (UPWA.). Through community based organizing, César Chávez was to lay the groundwork for a farm workers union.

While the Bracero program succeeded in expanding the farm labor supply, it resulted in depressed wages in the Southwest and was eventually dissolved. In 1964, under mounting domestic pressure, Congress repealed the federal authority for the Bracero program. The termination of the Bracero Program gave new impetus to illegal trafficking and the number of illegals apprehended began to increase steadily in 1965. The migration flow after 1964 was influenced by the following socioeconomic conditions in Mexico: 1) unemployment, 2) very large disparities in income distribution, 3) a discrimination of the rural sector in favor of the urban in the allocation of government funds, and 4) a dependency on foreign capital and technology. Also, it was cheap labor for the US.

Rather than halting the influx of migrants from south of the border, the legislation simply drove illegal immigration to unprecedented covert levels. In the three years after the termination of the legal apparatus for Mexican labor entry, the number of apprehensions of undocumented persons more than doubled along the Southwest border from 40,020 in 1964 to 96,641 in 1968. Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s the number of apprehensions in the Southwest made by the Border Patrol increased yearly almost without exception.

American companies placed factories, or maquiladoras, in close proximity to the border where products could be assembled with inexpensive Mexican labor and then easily shipped to markets in the U.S. The maquiladora system initiated a rapid wave of economic and demographic growth along the border. Maquiladora programs may have contributed to the emergence of "Stepwise migration", a phenomenon of the last twenty years where migrants temporarily move to a Mexican border town before entering the US. Some major border redistribution cities include Ciudad Juarez, Agua Prietta, Nogales, San Luis Rio Colorado, and Tijuana.

The Bracero program was replaced in 1964 by the H-2 program, which allowed employers to hire foreign workers for both agricultural and non-agricultural jobs in locations with a shortage of domestic workers. By 1986, this program was found to have similar problems as the Bracero program. By the early 1980s the United States government felt it had lost control of it's southwestern borders. High immigration, stagnant American wages, and widespread unemployment (particularly in California) all contributed to the rise of nativist sentiment in the US.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) attempted to control and deter illegal immigration by providing amnesty for long term workers, penalties for employers hiring undocumented workers, and a significant infusion of money and personnel for the Border Patrol. President Reagan's idea of a guest-worker program did not develop into legislation. Mexico's Lopez Portillo administration counted on migration to the US as a substitute for redistributive land reform in its handling of rural political pressures; the migratory flow functioned as an "escape valve" helping to dilute the effects of rapid demographic increase and preserving the status quo.

When the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was enacted, it divided H-2 workers into temporary agricultural workers (H-2A), and temporary non-agricultural workers (H-2B). IRCA also allowed special agricultural workers to legalize their status by proving they worked 90 days in U.S. agriculture between May 1, 1985 and May 1, 1986. Additionally, IRCA allowed additional replenishment agricultural workers to enter the United States as temporary residents between 1990 and 1993 if there was a shortage of farm workers during that time. The H-2A program is managed by three federal agencies. The Department of Labor (DOL) issues the H-2 labor certifications and oversees compliance with labor laws; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) adjudicates the H-2 petitions, and the Department of State (DOS) issues the visas to the workers at consulates overseas.

IRCA influenced a wider geographic dispersal of Mexican immigrants throughout the US and away from traditional gateway regions. The employment of workers in agricultural areas such as California and Texas fell in the 1980 s and early 1990 s while employment in urban areas grew. Legalization permitted more freedom of movement toward economic opportunities in the interior. In 1986 82% of legal immigrants settled in California, Texas or Illinois. A decade later, large numbers of Mexican immigrants were settling not only in the traditional states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Illinois, but in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and the New York-New Jersey area.