WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Bracero Program 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:05.320 Happy Saturday, everybody. In a couple of weeks, we're going 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:07.880 to be doing an episode on the Delano grape strike, 0:00:07.960 --> 0:00:10.320 which took place shortly after the end of the Brissero 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:14.280 program in the United States. We covered the Brissero program 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:18.279 on the show back on August, and rather than trying 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:20.880 to go back over all of that same context in 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:23.200 the Delano Grape Strike episode, we thought we would go 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:25.960 ahead and just put this classic back into people's feeds. 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:30.280 This episode also talks about a mass deportation effort that 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:35.479 overlapped the Briscero program, and that mass deportation effort was 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:39.239 named after a racist slur. I wrote this episode back 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:43.240 in If I were writing it today, I probably would 0:00:43.280 --> 0:00:46.200 have approached that differently. So we just wanted to note 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:49.519 up front that there are multiple references to the program, 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:54.360 including its full name, over the course of this episode. 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:58.120 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class a production 0:00:58.200 --> 0:01:06.720 of I Heart Radio. Hello, and Welcome to the podcast. 0:01:06.800 --> 0:01:11.600 I'm Tree C. D. Wilson, and I'm Holly fry So. Today, 0:01:12.040 --> 0:01:15.040 I think a lot of people think concerns about immigration 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:19.039 are a recent phenomenon. I mean definitely in the United States, 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:21.560 which is where we live and can talk about from experience. 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:24.000 But I'm maybe in other nations too, but definitely in 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:26.000 the US, right, people don't think of this is a 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:30.720 thing that's been around for a long time. Yeah, I 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:35.360 think there's an availing thought that uh, you know there 0:01:37.800 --> 0:01:41.679 colonists came and that was the big immigration thing, and 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:43.560 then there was this big gap and now we're all 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:46.800 arguing and worried about it again. Yeah, it's been like 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:50.600 the last I don't know, thirty or forty years. So 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:53.360 in a in a way, in a way, it definitely 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:58.520 is a new concern for people because for about a 0:01:58.600 --> 0:02:01.720 hundred and fifty years to the nation was founded, there 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:06.120 weren't really any immigration laws, right. If you could get here, 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:08.720 you got to live here. That was basically how it 0:02:08.760 --> 0:02:14.280 worked until, um, you know, the nineteenth century. So back 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:16.880 in the late seventeen hundreds, the country didn't really seem 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:22.160 to care about about immigration. But to look at another way, 0:02:22.240 --> 0:02:24.560 it is not a new concern at all, because the 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:27.560 United States started passing immigration laws and a lot of 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:30.840 them were targeted at immigrants from specific countries in the 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:34.000 eighteen sixties. So this is both a really new idea 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:38.239 given the whole history of the United States as a nation, uh, 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:41.640 and a really old one, given that it's been around 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:44.640 for more than a hundred and fifty years. So that 0:02:44.680 --> 0:02:48.560 whole division between like legal and illegal immigration is simultaneously 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:52.000 new and old. And today's story or today's story is 0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:55.200 part of that centuries long history. Because for parts of 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:59.120 the twentieth century, the United States and Mexico had agreements 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:03.160 in place that we're allowing and even encouraging Mexican nationals 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:05.840 to enter the United States to do agricultural work and 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:10.320 other labor, mostly in the American Southwest. And one specific 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:14.000 program called the Brissero program was launched during World War 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:17.600 Two to address a labor shortage um as American men 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:21.440 were needed for the war effort. But an unintended side 0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:25.760 effect of this program that was about legally coming to 0:03:25.800 --> 0:03:28.440 the United States to work, was this huge increase in 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:30.480 the number of people who were crossing the border from 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:34.960 Mexico illegally. And these illegal entries reached a point that 0:03:35.000 --> 0:03:39.040 the government implemented another program which I'm gonna make it 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:41.760 clear this is not an acceptable word to use today, 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:44.680 but it is literally what the program was named. It 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:49.600 was called Operation Wetback to deport Mexican nationals and huge groups. 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:52.800 So the intertwined stories of these two government programs is 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:55.720 what we are going to talk about today. And before 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:58.960 nineteen ten, there was simply not a lot of regulation 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:02.440 of the United State It's border with Mexico. People pretty 0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:05.480 much crossed back and forth as they pleased. And as 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:09.640 agricultural industry started to really grow in the Southwest, these 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:13.000 industries started to really rely on this readily available and 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:16.680 seasonal workforce that was coming in from Mexico in the 0:04:16.760 --> 0:04:20.040 nineteen twenties. This also became true of other industries in 0:04:20.080 --> 0:04:24.359 the American West and Southwest as well, including railroads and mining. 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:29.640 But today we're talking mostly about agriculture, so using Mexican 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:33.040 nationals as a source of labor basically came with some benefits. 0:04:33.440 --> 0:04:36.960 Agricultural work in a lot of places is highly seasonal, 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:39.719 and for the most part, migrant workers who were US 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:43.200 citizens were traveling as families. They would spend the year 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:45.839 moving from place to place as a family, for the 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:48.440 most part, spending a lot more time looking for work 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:51.520 than actually working. And when there was work, it was 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:55.160 usually work that the whole family did, including the children, 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:57.200 and an effort to try to make enough money to 0:04:57.400 --> 0:04:59.840 last them for the rest of the year, so that 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:02.839 it's not an ideal situations been a lot of ways. 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:06.279 Mexican workers, on the other hand, tended to be young 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:10.679 men traveling in groups with other young men. A group 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:13.240 of young men was overall a lot more efficient than 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:16.919 a family with children, and on the more exploitive side 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:19.760 of things, many were willing to accept lower wages than 0:05:19.800 --> 0:05:23.799 what was considered standard among Americans. Because of a limited 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:27.600 proficiency with the English language, Mexican nationals were often unaware 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:30.880 of laws or standards that could protect them in their work, 0:05:31.480 --> 0:05:34.040 and as a result, there were a lot of growers 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:37.360 and farmers in the American West and Southwest who were 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:40.080 willing to overlook the issue of whether a person had 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:43.239 come into the United States legally or not in order 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:48.480 to get cheap, easy to exploit labor. By the early 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:51.880 nineteen twenties, though, an increasing number of people were starting 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:54.560 to think of this basically open border in the way 0:05:54.600 --> 0:05:58.240 it affected the labor pool is a big problem. Large 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:01.679 farms were driving down their own costs by employing large 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:04.880 numbers of Mexican migrant workers at a really low rate 0:06:04.920 --> 0:06:07.960 of pay, and small farms considered themselves to be at 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:12.480 a big financial disadvantage. As a result, labor organizations started 0:06:12.520 --> 0:06:16.960 tacitly excluding Mexican workers when they formed unions, and also 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:20.200 started using their political clout to lobby the government for 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:23.080 more enforcement along the border and to put a stop 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:27.200 to immigration from Mexico. In nineteen twenty four, the United 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:30.800 States formally established the Border Patrol as part of the 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:35.799 Labor Appropriation Act. As the US government started taking steps 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:39.279 to secure the Mexican border and curtail illegal immigration in 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:43.640 the nineteen twenties, local communities and states began taking steps 0:06:43.680 --> 0:06:47.640 to regulate their own Mexican population as well, as we've 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:52.000 discussed in our podcasts on Mendoes Versus Westminster and Macario Garcia. 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:55.480 Much of the Southwest and West approached its Hispanic and 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:58.440 Latino population in much the same way most of the 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:02.560 rest of the nation did. Its lack population through segregation, 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:06.800 which was reinforced either through laws or through social customs. 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:12.040 In places with large Mexican and Mexican American populations, discrimination 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:15.640 was widespread and socially accepted by much of the Anglo 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:21.400 community during the Great Depression, which lasted roughly a decade 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:24.680 beginning in nine nine, and the Dust Bowl, which was 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:28.040 a devastating period of drought and dust storms that struck 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:30.960 much of the Southwest and Great Plains. During the same time, 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:34.280 life was pretty hard for pretty much everybody in the region, 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:38.000 but it was especially hard for people of Mexican descent. 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:43.520 The Anglo community was increasingly hostile towards Mexican migrants, viewing 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:48.640 them as unnecessary competition for incredibly scarce jobs. The industries 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:51.440 that had been relying so heavily on Mexican labor for 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:55.280 so long increasingly tried to exclude Mexicans from their workforce 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:59.200 during the Great Depression. Prior to the Great Depression, the 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:02.280 United States in Mexico had been working together to find 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:04.920 ways to send Mexican nationals who were in the US 0:08:05.000 --> 0:08:10.280 illegally back to Mexico. During the Great Depression, those efforts increased. 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:13.720 President Herbert Hoover ordered the Department of Labor to work 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:18.080 out a deportation program. The Mexican government tried to identify 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:20.920 its citizens who were in the United States and in 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:25.720 many cases paid for their return to Mexico. Also, due 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:28.840 to the Great Depression, Mexico was facing its own labor shortage, 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:31.160 so part of the reason it paid to repatriot its 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:35.199 citizens was to try to fill that labor shortage. Between 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:40.120 nineteen and nine thirty five, about eighty five thousand Mexicans 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:44.480 voluntarily returned to Mexico and another four hundred thousand word 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:47.640 deported or repatriated, depending on how you want to look 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:50.320 at it. Most of the ones who tried to return 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:52.800 to the United States during the right Depression were turned 0:08:52.840 --> 0:08:54.960 away at the border, which at this point was a 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:57.440 lot more secure than it had been earlier than the 0:08:57.520 --> 0:09:02.280 nineteen twenties. However, things shifted dramatically once again during World 0:09:02.280 --> 0:09:05.839 War Two. The draft applied to all men residing in 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:09.800 the United States, whether they were citizens or not. Roughly 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:13.319 seven hundred and fifty thousand Hispanic men saw some sort 0:09:13.400 --> 0:09:16.320 of active service in the war, and with so many 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:19.760 men serving in the war, the job market changed dramatically 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:23.240 in the United States. Many men who had held agricultural 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:25.880 jobs went to serve in the war, and then other 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:28.920 men and women moved out of agriculture and into higher 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:31.960 paying manufacturing jobs that were either opened up as part 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:34.360 of the war effort or because the people who had 0:09:34.360 --> 0:09:37.760 been doing those jobs joined the armed forces that were 0:09:37.840 --> 0:09:41.160 also disrupted trade with Europe, which cut off the United 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:44.360 States sources of many goods and meant that basically America 0:09:44.400 --> 0:09:47.960 had to make them for ourselves. The overall effect of 0:09:48.000 --> 0:09:50.840 all this on the labor pool for agricultural work was, 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:54.480 as you might suspect, enormous, and it led the US 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:58.199 to work out a program specifically to recruit Mexican workers. 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:00.400 And we're going to talk more about that after we 0:10:00.520 --> 0:10:02.880 pause and think one of the sponsors that keeps our 0:10:02.880 --> 0:10:18.000 show going to return to the Bricero program. This huge 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:21.239 shift in the workforce during World War Two had immediate 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:25.640 and detrimental effects on agriculture. Soon after the war began, 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:29.520 the Southwest's cotton and vegetable growers were petitioning Congress to 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:32.920 hire temporary workers to help them build a labor shortfall 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:35.680 that basically meant they couldn't harvest what they needed to harvest. 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:40.040 The key here was that this workforce would be temporary. 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:43.000 In the words of a report from President Harry S. 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:47.959 Truman's Commission on Migratory Labor later on in nine quote, 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:52.240 the demand for migratory labor is thus essentially twofold to 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:55.320 be ready to go to work when needed, to be 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:59.600 gone when not needed. So the United States, leaning on 0:10:59.679 --> 0:11:03.040 Frank Lynda Roosevelt's good neighbor policy, started trying to work 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:06.640 out a bilateral agreement with Mexico that would allow Mexican 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:09.640 nationals to enter the United States to work and then 0:11:09.679 --> 0:11:13.680 return home when they were done. At first, Mexico was 0:11:13.760 --> 0:11:17.520 reluctant to do this for a number of reasons. Mexican 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:21.240 citizens who had previously immigrated to do exactly these types 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:24.640 of work had faced discrimination and exploitive treatment in the 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:27.920 United States. Many had been forced out of their jobs 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:31.600 and stranded during the Great Depression. So basically, Mexico remembered 0:11:31.640 --> 0:11:33.320 all of that and just didn't have a lot of 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:36.280 confidence that its citizens would be treated fairly if they 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:39.920 went back to the United States to work. So Mexico 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:44.320 insisted that any agreement spell out protections for its citizens, 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:47.240 one that would protect Mexican laborers while in the United 0:11:47.280 --> 0:11:51.920 States and would protect Mexico's own industries from suffering due 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:55.920 to a lack of workers. Mexico did, however, see some 0:11:55.960 --> 0:11:58.960 potential benefits to allowing its citizens to work in the 0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:02.600 United States. It was hoped that anyone who entered the 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:05.760 program would return home with money that would be injected 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:09.200 into the Mexican economy. Running parallel with that was the 0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:12.480 idea that Mexico's workers would learn new techniques relating to 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:16.080 agriculture and then bring those new techniques back to Mexico. 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:19.880 The result of this negotiation between Mexico and the United 0:12:19.920 --> 0:12:23.040 States was the Brissero program, which was launched in nineteen 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:26.199 forty two by executive order and then formalized by a 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:31.640 bilateral agreement on April nine. It would later be amended 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:35.160 by Public Law seventy eight and nineteen fifty one. The 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:37.840 basic terms of the Brossero program would be that this 0:12:37.880 --> 0:12:41.080 would be non military work. It was not acceptable to 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:44.240 recruit Mexican nationals to work in agriculture and then put 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:48.240 them into the military service. Mexican nationals would be protected 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:53.200 from discrimination. Employers would pay transportation and living expenses, as 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:56.679 well as a fair wage. Workers would get medical and 0:12:56.760 --> 0:13:00.920 sanitary services at no cost to them. People enrolling in 0:13:00.960 --> 0:13:04.600 the Broscero program would sign a Spanish language contract and 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:08.000 be paid a fair wage that would not be less 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:10.960 than what was standard for Anglo workers in the area, 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:15.000 and workers under the age of fourteen were not allowed. 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:18.520 There were also protections if there was a shortage of work, 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:23.280 guaranteeing a subsistence level pay. If someone contracted with a 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:25.800 Mexican national but turned out not to have work for 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:29.120 them to do, a percentage of the broscero's pay was 0:13:29.240 --> 0:13:31.719 also to be saved and returned to them once they 0:13:31.720 --> 0:13:36.400 returned to Mexico. The criteria for the workers themselves were 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:38.800 that they had to be young, healthy men who had 0:13:38.840 --> 0:13:42.520 agricultural experience but did not own land of their own. 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:46.040 They also needed to have a letter from local authorities 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:49.120 saying that their labor wasn't needed where they actually lived, 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:52.000 and that was to try to diminish the impact on Mexicans. 0:13:52.000 --> 0:13:56.120 Mexico's own labor force. Applicants would go to collection points 0:13:56.160 --> 0:14:00.200 in Mexico, be fingerprinted, be sprayed down with DDT, and 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:03.920 then be taken to the United States. In spite of 0:14:04.000 --> 0:14:07.880 concerns that Mexican nationals would take jobs away from Americans. 0:14:08.320 --> 0:14:11.760 At first, this seemed like a mutually beneficial agreement. The 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:14.320 United States would get the farm labor it needed and 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:18.280 Mexico would get new, modernized farming techniques, an injection of 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:24.240 cash into its economy and jobs for citizens who needed them. However, 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:27.120 things took a turn for the worst pretty much immediately. 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:30.120 Most of the work to be done was known as 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:33.720 stoop labor. This was cultivation work that was done using 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:37.560 a short handled hoe stooped over rose into the in 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:41.440 the fields. This was grueling and like it could have 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:43.720 been done with a long handled hoe instead of a 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:46.360 short handled hoe that required you to literally stoop over, 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:49.240 But for some reason people thought a long handled who 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:54.400 was damaging to the crops. Today, the short handled hoe 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:58.840 is regarded as an occupational hazard and in many states 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:03.600 it is banned as unsafe. There were also way more 0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:08.080 interested Mexican nationals than there were jobs, and soon officials 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:12.160 processing applications were accepting bribes to move people ahead of 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:18.200 the line. Recruitment efforts became prone to corruption. People who 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:21.560 didn't meet these qualifications for one reason or another also 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:24.560 started using the constant traffic back and forth across the 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:28.760 border to make the crossing themselves illegally, and as was 0:15:28.840 --> 0:15:31.880 the case before, there were still plenty of growers who 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:34.960 were willing to hire these people for almost no money. 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:38.720 Unscrupulous growers also figured out that a lot of the 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:42.040 Mexican nationals who were actually part of the Broscero program 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:44.720 didn't have a lot of proficiency in English and weren't 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:47.880 aware of the pay and protections they were legally entitled 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:51.120 to under the terms of this program. This definitely was 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:55.080 not universal. In various parts of the United States, broscero's 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:58.680 organized themselves and went on strike to protest low wages 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:02.520 and poor treatment that we're specifically outlawed in the Briscero 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:07.280 programs terms. Many growers flouted the rules of the program 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:10.440 and hired people who had crossed illegally to get around 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:14.400 having to worry about all of this. Mexico eventually refused 0:16:14.400 --> 0:16:17.440 to send workers to the entire state of Texas because 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:21.600 of flagrant hiring of unauthorized workers as well as other abuses. 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:28.160 So soon illegal border crossings were rampant and the employment 0:16:28.160 --> 0:16:32.440 of people who had entered illegally was widespread. Wages started 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:35.520 to drop for basically everyone because there were so many 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:38.160 low wage workers who had become part of the economy 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:42.120 in the Southwest that minimum standard housing and medical care 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:44.320 that was supposed to be part of this program also 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:47.160 didn't materialize, and a lot of people who actually were 0:16:47.280 --> 0:16:50.120 part of it wound up tightly packed together in barracks 0:16:50.200 --> 0:16:54.600 on canvas cots, where respiratory diseases and other illnesses spread 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:59.000 like wildfire. Over the twenty two year life of this program, 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:02.920 four point five million Mexican nationals legally came to the 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:05.760 United States to work, some of them returning to the 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:10.600 US repeatedly under new contracts, but far more entered illegally 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:14.040 outside the bounds of the program. There was actually a 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:18.600 six thousand percent increase in illegal immigration between nineteen forty 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:23.960 four and nineteen fifty four. Support for the program, which 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:27.480 had never been universal, started to wane after World War 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:30.040 Two was over and Americans who had survived the war 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:32.680 started to return home and to try to reclaim their 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:36.879 old jobs. The official wartime program ended on December thirty 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:40.080 one of nineteen forty seven, although the program continued to 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:43.760 be extended for peacetime purposes for quite a while after that, 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:47.280 and eventually Mexico, fed up with what it saw as 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:50.119 the United States refusal to enforce the terms of their 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:54.680 bilateral agreement, stopped participating by just declining to send any 0:17:54.680 --> 0:17:58.560 more workers through official channels. According to the Texas State 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:03.720 Historical Association's handbook, of Texas. The US retaliated against Mexico's 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:07.800 non participation in nineteen fifty one by allowing thousands of 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:11.680 people to enter the US illegally, arresting them and then, 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:14.760 rather than deporting them, turning them over to the Texas 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:19.360 Employment Commission to be put to work. By the nineteen sixties, 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:22.919 the Broscero program was officially on the way out. Labor 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:26.280 organizations had become a lot more influential in policy and 0:18:26.320 --> 0:18:29.399 had started advocating very vocally for jobs in the United 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:32.080 States to be filled by Americans and not by Mexicans. 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:36.920 At the same time, increasing mechanization in the agriculture industry 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:39.200 meant that a lot of the physical labor that had 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:42.320 required this huge labor pool was disappearing. The need for 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:46.600 physical labor became a lot smaller. The Brassero program needed 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:50.800 to be reauthorized periodically, and there were increasingly contentious debates 0:18:50.840 --> 0:18:54.399 whenever it came up for renewal. Its re authorizations in 0:18:54.520 --> 0:18:58.320 nineteen sixty one and nineteen sixty three in particular, were 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:01.600 extremely hotly debated. It There was a lot of pressure 0:19:01.640 --> 0:19:04.600 to end the program after a bus accident killed thirty 0:19:04.600 --> 0:19:08.800 two migrant workers in nineteen sixty three. The Burcero program 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:13.719 eventually expired the following year in nineteen sixty four. With 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:16.199 the abolition of the program. One of the things that 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:19.320 proponents had often said about it turned out apparently to 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:21.800 be true. A lot of people who were in favor 0:19:21.880 --> 0:19:25.160 of the program insisted that American workers did not want 0:19:25.200 --> 0:19:27.399 to do this work, which is why it needed to 0:19:27.440 --> 0:19:31.400 be open to Mexican nationals. After the abolition of the program, 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:34.600 there were about five hundred and nineteen thousand unemployed people 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:37.320 in California, which should have been plenty to cover the 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:40.440 seventy thousand people who were needed to do stoop labor 0:19:40.520 --> 0:19:44.240 in the agricultural industry. But the nature, the nature of 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:47.240 the work and the wages that were that were offered 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:49.680 meant that a lot of these jobs went unfilled and 0:19:49.760 --> 0:19:52.600 tons of fruits and vegetables rotted in the fields. So 0:19:53.000 --> 0:19:55.040 there was a lot of argument that this should have 0:19:55.080 --> 0:19:58.560 been like a gradual phase out rather than just an 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:01.800 abrupt abolition. As we said at the top of the show. 0:20:02.000 --> 0:20:05.480 Running parallel to all of this was a mass deportation 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:09.920 program focused on Mexican nationals called the horrible name Operation 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:12.240 Went Back and We're going to talk about that after 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:14.399 we pause once again and take a break in here 0:20:14.440 --> 0:20:27.439 from one of our fantastic sponsors, to get back to 0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:31.800 Operation Went Back as an example of how the United 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:35.480 States thinking on immigration shifted. In the nineteen thirties and forties, 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:40.000 President Franklin D. Roosevelt combined two other government agencies to 0:20:40.080 --> 0:20:45.080 form the Immigration and Naturalization Service in three This agency 0:20:45.200 --> 0:20:49.080 was originally part of the Department of Labor. In ninety 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:51.679 that changed, the I n S and the Border Patrol 0:20:51.680 --> 0:20:53.920 that fell under it moved from the Department of Labor 0:20:54.000 --> 0:20:56.359 to the Department of Justice. With that the I n 0:20:56.520 --> 0:20:58.600 S and the Border Patrol were no longer about work. 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:01.800 They were about lawing for sman And as we said, 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:05.240 Operation Went Back was a mass deportation effort that came 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:07.600 along after the I and S moved to the Department 0:21:07.600 --> 0:21:11.919 of Justice. It's often portrayed as a swift, decisive effort 0:21:11.960 --> 0:21:15.119 to deport people who had entered the US illegally, but 0:21:15.160 --> 0:21:18.000 it was really part of a decades long effort that ran, 0:21:18.040 --> 0:21:21.560 as we said, parallel to most of the Burscero program. 0:21:21.600 --> 0:21:25.720 In the nineteen forties, for example, special Mexican deportation parties 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:29.760 were established to try to apprehend and deport Mexican migrant 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:34.560 workers in there was an attempt to reinforce targeted portions 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:37.640 of the border with chain link fencing. In the nineteen 0:21:37.640 --> 0:21:40.880 forties and nineteen fifties, some border patrol agents ran an 0:21:40.960 --> 0:21:45.159 unsanctioned quote little barber shop, basically clippers that they carried 0:21:45.200 --> 0:21:48.400 with them to cut the hair of repeat immigration offenders, 0:21:48.480 --> 0:21:54.000 sometimes in intentionally humiliating ways. In terms of the more 0:21:54.080 --> 0:21:56.959 above board efforts to control immigration, a lot of them 0:21:57.040 --> 0:22:00.240 really were across national The United States why it to 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:04.040 keep illegal immigration from driving down wages and causing housing 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:07.240 and social issues within its own borders, and Mexico wanted 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:10.159 to have enough workers to meet its own labor needs 0:22:10.200 --> 0:22:14.280 and also protected citizens from exploitation and discrimination while they 0:22:14.320 --> 0:22:17.320 were in the United States. In nineteen fifty one, a 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:20.680 report on Mexican migrant workers in the US pinned all 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:24.800 sorts of social and economic ills on illegal immigration and 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:29.119 characterized the situation as an invasion. Soon, the US was 0:22:29.200 --> 0:22:31.520 diverting more and more of the border patrol and i 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:34.440 n s to the Mexican border, more than doubling the 0:22:34.520 --> 0:22:37.919 number of agents that were stationed there. In between nineteen 0:22:37.960 --> 0:22:40.480 forty three and nineteen fifty three, there were a lot 0:22:40.520 --> 0:22:44.680 more people apprehended in illegal border crossings. The number rose 0:22:44.760 --> 0:22:48.080 from eleven thousand, seven hundred and fifteen in nineteen forty 0:22:48.119 --> 0:22:51.639 three to eight hundred and eighty five thousand, five hundred 0:22:51.680 --> 0:22:55.520 eighty seven in nineteen fifty three, with Mexicans making up 0:22:55.560 --> 0:22:59.880 more and more of those apprehended. At the same time, though, 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:03.520 the United States didn't actually increase the immigration and Naturalization 0:23:03.600 --> 0:23:05.840 services budgets, so even though there were more agents on 0:23:05.880 --> 0:23:08.800 the Mexican border, there were fewer agents overall, with the 0:23:08.800 --> 0:23:12.359 forces numbers dropping a third between nineteen two and nineteen 0:23:12.359 --> 0:23:16.120 fifty one. When Dwight D. Eisenhower took office as president 0:23:16.160 --> 0:23:20.040 in nineteen fifty three, it's estimated that three million Mexican 0:23:20.160 --> 0:23:23.879 nationals in the US had entered the country illegally, but 0:23:23.960 --> 0:23:27.520 previous efforts to deport them had increasingly stalled out because 0:23:27.560 --> 0:23:30.680 so many farms and ranches were dependent on this illicit 0:23:30.760 --> 0:23:34.240 labor pool. In the words of Walt Edwards, who served 0:23:34.240 --> 0:23:36.679 in the Border Patrol from nineteen fifty one to nineteen 0:23:36.720 --> 0:23:40.480 sixty four, quote, when we caught illegal aliens on farms 0:23:40.520 --> 0:23:44.120 and ranches. The farmer or rancher would often call and complain, 0:23:44.760 --> 0:23:47.600 and depending on how politically connected they were, there would 0:23:47.640 --> 0:23:52.600 be political intervention. Yeah that political intervention was basically getting 0:23:52.640 --> 0:23:56.159 their workers out of jail and turning away from the 0:23:56.200 --> 0:23:58.040 fact that they were not supposed to be in the 0:23:58.119 --> 0:24:03.800 United States. In nineteen fifty four, Eisenhower appointed General Joseph Swing, 0:24:04.080 --> 0:24:06.840 also known as Jumping Joe, as the Commissioner of the 0:24:06.880 --> 0:24:11.720 Immigration and Naturalization Service. Swing started transferring immigration officials who 0:24:11.720 --> 0:24:14.000 had spent a long time in the Southwest to other 0:24:14.080 --> 0:24:16.320