What follows are legislations that almost explicitly, if not targeted, greatly affected the lives of everyday Mexicans.
The Bracero Guest Worker Program
The Program was signed into law in August 1942, and was driven by WWII labor shortages–particularly in farming but also in construction. It brought cllose to 5 million Mexicans to the US as temporary or seasonal workers. Contracts were controlled by independent farmer associations and written in English, often leaving the workers in situations where they didn’t know what kinds of rights they were signing away. When the contracts expired, braceros were mandated to hand over their permits and return to Mexico. By 1964, the program ended due to floods of illegal migrants, improved farming techniques and reports that workers had been mistreated. Illegal immigration had thus become a fixture of the US economy, as farmers still had such a high demand for the cheap labor pools.
Bracero worker holding farming tool, NMAH, History of Technology Collections, Leonard Nadel 1956
