Border Patrol in , citizens of both countries crossed the border at will, and farmers in the southwestern United States recruited seasonal workers from Mexico without government oversight.
The bracero program, at least on paper, was an extension of this type of labor arrangement—a more formal and more tightly supervised agreement to provide an adequate labor force during another global military conflict. The Bracero Program officially named the Labor Importation Program, was created for straightforward economic reasons. In the s, white In mid, as it became clearer to U.
The United States looked south for that labor, requesting that the Mexican government provide workers to address the ongoing demands of the American agribusinesses supporting the war effort and to replace the poor white, black, and Latino Americans who were leaving farms to occupy jobs in better-paying industrialized factories.
Mexico was initially hesitant, owing to strained racist cultural relations that had been brewing through the s. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December ultimately pushed Mexican leadership into providing workers for the United States as a way to actively contribute to the Allied war effort.
The Mexican government also believed that participation in such a program would modernize their country, transforming it into a modern nation-state. Even so, before Mexico would enter into a cooperative labor program with the United States, the nation demanded that four major issues be addressed:.
Those concerns were addressed, and the final agreement that established the bracero program was signed on August 4, Regardless of complaints or violations, the program was renewed in , with Mexicans expanding their work to railroads. The agricultural aspects of the agreement were also renewed in , during the Korean War. Aware of the checkered history of the program, in the early s President Harry S. Truman established a commission to study the agreement, evaluate complaints and violations, and suggest reforms.
Due to this need, a treaty was signed in between the United States and Mexico to alleviate the shortage of labor. With many American men sent off to fight in Europe and elsewhere, the recruitment and processing of an available pool of laborers from Mexico created what is called the bracero program.
Under this program, Mexican workers, many of whom were rural peasants, were allowed to enter the United States on a temporary basis. Between and , the year the program ended, it was estimated that approximately 4. Many laborers faced an array of injustices and abuses, including substandard housing, discrimination, and unfulfilled contracts or being cheated out of wages.
Nevertheless, the impact of the bracero program on the history and patterns of migration and settlement in the United States remains an important area to explore and assess, particularly in the contexts of civil rights, social justice, and Latino history in the United States.
Several short-term labor agreements existed until , when Public Law 45 passed and was reluctantly signed by President Harry S. The program came to an end in in part because of concerns about abuses of the program and the treatment of the Bracero workers. Although the program was supposed to guarantee a minimum wage, housing, and health care, many workers faced low wages, horrible living and working conditions, and discrimination. For Mexico, the Bracero Program served to alter the trajectory of economic development in those communities that sent braceros.
Bracero remittances created positive income shocks for households in those communities that sent them to the United States. The presence of Braceros made organizing farmworkers difficult because the growers had a ready source of labor if the farmworkers went on strike. After the end of the Bracero program in , union organizers were more successful.
The UFW continues organizing in major agricultural sectors, chiefly in California. They include the first state standards in the U. Thus, during negotiations in over a new bracero program, Mexico sought to have the United States impose sanctions on American employers of undocumented workers. This agreement made it so that the U. Public Law 78 represented one of the recent attempts of the United States government, through co-operation with the Mexican government, to regulate the movement of migrant workers.
The impact of this law upon Mexico and its relevance for United States relations with that country are of importance. This series of diplomatic accords between Mexico and the United States permitted millions of Mexican men to work legally in the United States on short-term labor contracts.
The bracero program grew out of a series of bi-lateral agreements between Mexico and the United States that allowed millions of Mexican men to come to the United States to work on, short-term, primarily agricultural labor contracts. The bracero program was controversial in its time. As many as 1. Railroads in Mexico made it easier for Mexicans to travel to the US border, while those in the United States provided construction and maintenance jobs for Mexicans.
The Great Depression of the s hit Mexican immigrants especially hard. Immigrants were offered free train rides to Mexico, and some went voluntarily, but many were either tricked or coerced into repatriation, and some U.
The U. Up to 1.
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