WEBVTT - Bracero Program 0:00:01.320 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Steph you missed in history Class from how 0:00:04.320 --> 0:00:13.080 Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:13.200 --> 0:00:18.000 I'm three Cbe Wilson and I'm Holly fry So. Today, 0:00:18.440 --> 0:00:21.439 I think a lot of people think concerns about immigration 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:25.400 are a recent phenomenon. I mean definitely in the United State, 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:27.960 which is where we live and can talk about from experience, 0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:31.240 but maybe in other nations too, but definitely in the US, right, 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:32.919 people don't think of this is a thing that's been 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:37.960 around for a long time. Yeah, I think there's a 0:00:38.200 --> 0:00:46.080 prevailing thought that, uh, you know there colonists came and 0:00:46.320 --> 0:00:48.519 that was the big immigration thing, and then there was 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:50.760 this big gap and now we're all arguing and worried 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:54.160 about it again. Yeah, it's been like the last I 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:57.880 don't know, thirty or forty years. So in a in away, 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:02.400 in a way, it definitely is a new concern for 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:06.480 people because for about a hundred and fifty years after 0:01:06.720 --> 0:01:10.520 the nation was founded, there weren't really any immigration laws. Right, 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:14.160 if you could get here, you got to live here. 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:18.920 That was basically how it worked until um, you know, 0:01:19.200 --> 0:01:22.040 the nineteenth century. So back in the late seventeen hundreds, 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:26.800 the country didn't really seem to care about about immigration. 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:29.240 But to look at another way, it is not a 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:32.520 new concern at all, because the United States started passing 0:01:32.560 --> 0:01:34.920 immigration laws and a lot of them were targeted at 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:38.840 immigrants from specific countries in the eighteen sixties. So this 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:41.840 is both a really new idea given the whole history 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:45.080 of the United States as a nation uh and a 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:48.520 really old one given that it's been around for more 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:51.720 than a hundred and fifty years. So that whole division 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:55.800 between like legal and illegal immigration is simultaneously new and old. 0:01:56.720 --> 0:01:59.080 And today's story or today's story is part of that 0:01:59.120 --> 0:02:02.760 centuries long story. Because for parts of the twentieth century, 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:06.080 the United States and Mexico had agreements in place that 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:09.959 we're allowing and even encouraging Mexican nationals to enter the 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:13.880 United States to do agricultural work and other labor, mostly 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:17.880 in the American Southwest. And one specific program called the 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:21.720 Brissero program was launched during World War Two to address 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:24.920 a labor shortage um as American men were needed for 0:02:24.960 --> 0:02:28.800 the war effort. But an unintended side effect of this 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:32.919 program that was about legally coming to the United States 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:35.320 to work was this huge increase in the number of 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:38.800 people who were crossing the border from Mexico illegally, and 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:42.520 these illegal entries reached a point that the government implemented 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:46.040 another program, which I'm gonna make it clear this is 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:48.600 not an acceptable word to use today, but it is 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:52.080 literally what the program was named. It was called Operation 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:56.560 Wetback to deport Mexican nationals and huge groups. So the 0:02:56.639 --> 0:02:59.440 intertwined stories of these two government programs is what we 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:03.080 are going to talk about today. And before nineteen ten, 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:05.760 there was simply not a lot of regulation of the 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:09.600 United States border with Mexico. People pretty much crossed back 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:13.600 and forth as they pleased. And as agricultural industry started 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:17.080 to really grow in the Southwest, these industries started to 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:20.680 really rely on this readily available and seasonal workforce that 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:24.200 was coming in from Mexico in the nineteen twenties. This 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:27.400 also became true of other industries in the American West 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:31.520 and Southwest as well, including railroads and mining. But today 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:36.880 we're talking mostly about agriculture, so using Mexican nationals as 0:03:36.880 --> 0:03:40.600 a source of labor basically came with some benefits. Agricultural 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:43.600 work and a lot of places is highly seasonal and 0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:46.760 for the most part, migrant workers who were US citizens 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:50.000 were traveling as families. They would spend the year moving 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:52.839 from place to place as a family for the most part, 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:55.960 spending a lot more time looking for work than actually working, 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:58.720 and when there was work, it was usually worked that 0:03:58.800 --> 0:04:01.920 the whole family did it, including the children, and an 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:04.760 effort to try to make enough money to last them 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:06.840 for the rest of the year. So that's not an 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:11.080 ideal situation in a lot of ways. Mexican workers, on 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:13.840 the other hand, tended to be young men traveling in 0:04:14.080 --> 0:04:17.600 groups with other young men. A group of young men 0:04:17.760 --> 0:04:20.880 was overall a lot more efficient than a family with children, 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:24.320 and on the more exploitive side of things, many were 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:27.440 willing to accept lower wages than what was considered standard 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:31.960 among Americans. Because of a limited proficiency with the English language, 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:35.760 Mexican nationals were often unaware of laws or standards that 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:38.679 could protect them in their work, and as a result, 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:41.279 there were a lot of growers and farmers in the 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:44.880 American West and Southwest who were willing to overlook the 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:47.520 issue of whether a person had come into the United 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:51.000 States legally or not in order to get cheap, easy 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:56.320 to exploit labor. By the early nineteen twenties, though an 0:04:56.320 --> 0:04:58.839 increasing number of people were starting to think of this 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:02.120 basically open border in the way it affected the labor 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:05.880 pool is a big problem. Large farms were driving down 0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:09.560 their own costs by employing large numbers of Mexican migrant 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:12.400 workers at a really low rate of pay, and small 0:05:12.480 --> 0:05:15.920 farms considered themselves to be at a big financial disadvantage. 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:21.200 As a result, labor organizations started tacitly excluding Mexican workers 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:24.760 when they formed unions, and also started using their political 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:28.039 clout to lobby the government for more enforcement along the 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:31.400 border and to put a stop to immigration from Mexico. 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:35.400 In nineteen twenty four, the United States formally established the 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:39.839 Border Patrol as part of the Labor Appropriation Act. As 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:43.400 the US government started taking steps to secure the Mexican 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:47.640 border and curtail illegal immigration in the nineteen twenties, local 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:51.160 communities and states began taking steps to regulate their own 0:05:51.200 --> 0:05:55.240 Mexican population as well. As we've discussed in our podcasts 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:59.400 on Mendoes versus Westminster and Macario Garcia, much of the 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:03.400 Southwest and West approached its Hispanic and Latino population in 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:05.359 much the same way most of the rest of the 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:10.480 Nation did its black population through segregation, which was reinforced 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:14.400 either through laws or through social customs in places with 0:06:14.560 --> 0:06:19.720 large Mexican and Mexican American populations. Discrimination was widespread and 0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:24.960 socially accepted by much of the Anglo community during the 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:29.280 Great Depression, which lasted roughly a decade beginning in nine nine, 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:32.440 and the Dust Bowl, which was a devastating period of 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:35.440 drought and dust storms that struck much of the Southwest 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:38.599 and Great Plains during the same time, life was pretty 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:41.359 hard for pretty much everybody in the region, but it 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:45.880 was especially hard for people of Mexican descent. The Anglo 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:50.360 community was increasingly hostile towards Mexican migrants, viewing them as 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:55.360 unnecessary competition for incredibly scarce jobs. The industries that had 0:06:55.400 --> 0:06:58.279 been relying so heavily on Mexican labor for so long 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:02.159 increasingly tried to exp blued Mexicans from their workforce during 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:06.040 the Great Depression. Prior to the Great Depression, the United 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:08.960 States and Mexico had been working together to find ways 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:11.960 to send Mexican nationals who were in the US illegally 0:07:12.320 --> 0:07:16.680 back to Mexico. During the Great Depression, those efforts increased, 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:20.120 President Herbert Hoover ordered the Department of Labor to work 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:24.440 out a deportation program. The Mexican government tried to identify 0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:27.320 its citizens who were in the United States and in 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:32.120 many cases paid for their return to Mexico. Also, due 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:35.240 to the Great Depression, Mexico was facing its own labor shortage, 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:37.560 so part of the reason it paid to repatriot its 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:41.600 citizens was to try to fill that labor shortage. Between 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:47.320 nine and ninety five, about eighty five thousand Mexicans voluntarily 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:51.520 returned to Mexico and another four hundred thousand words deported 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:54.360 or repatriated, depending on how you want to look at it. 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:56.960 Most of the ones who tried to return to the 0:07:57.040 --> 0:07:59.560 United States during the Great Depression were turned away at 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:01.760 the board, which at this point was a lot more 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:05.600 secure that it had been earlier than the nineteen twenties. However, 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:10.000 things shifted dramatically once again during World War Two. The 0:08:10.120 --> 0:08:13.200 draft applied to all men residing in the United States, 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:17.080 whether they were citizens or not. Roughly seven hundred and 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:20.680 fifty thousand Hispanic men saw some sort of active service 0:08:20.720 --> 0:08:23.720 in the war, and with so many men serving in 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:27.239 the war, the job market changed dramatically in the United States, 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:30.840 many men who had held agricultural jobs went to serve 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:33.440 in the war, and then other men and women moved 0:08:33.440 --> 0:08:37.080 out of agriculture and into higher paying manufacturing jobs that 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:39.160 were either opened up as part of the war effort 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:41.920 or because the people who had been doing those jobs 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:46.120 joined the armed forces. That were also disrupted trade with Europe, 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:49.080 which cut off the United States sources of many goods 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:52.240 and meant that basically America had to make them for ourselves. 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:55.800 The overall effect of all this on the labor pool 0:08:55.880 --> 0:09:00.080 for agricultural work was, as you might suspect, enormous, and 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:02.800 it led the US to work out a program specifically 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:05.920 to recruit Mexican workers. And we're going to talk more 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:08.200 about that after we pause and thank one of the 0:09:08.240 --> 0:09:17.920 sponsors that keeps our show going to return to the 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:22.080 Bricero program. That's huge shift in the workforce during World 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:26.679 War two had immediate and detrimental effects on agriculture. Soon 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:30.120 after the war began, the Southwest's cotton and vegetable growers 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:33.679 were petitioning Congress to hire temporary workers to help them 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:36.679 fill a labor shortfall that basically meant they couldn't harvest 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:40.000 what they needed to harvest. The key here was that 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:43.560 this workforce would be temporary. In the words of a 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:47.360 report from President Harry S. Truman's Commission on Migratory Labor 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:52.000 later on in nine quote, the demand for migratory labor 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:55.760 is thus essentially twofold, to be ready to go to 0:09:55.880 --> 0:09:59.760 work when needed, to be gone when not needed. So 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:04.000 the United States, leaning on Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good neighbor policy, 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:07.120 started trying to work out a bilateral agreement with Mexico 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:10.640 that would allow Mexican nationals to enter the United States 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:13.360 to work and then return home when they were done. 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:17.520 At first, Mexico was reluctant to do this for a 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:21.960 number of reasons. Mexican citizens who had previously immigrated to 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:25.480 do exactly these types of work had faced discrimination and 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:29.240 exploitive treatment in the United States. Many had been forced 0:10:29.240 --> 0:10:31.920 out of their jobs and stranded during the Great Depression. 0:10:32.040 --> 0:10:34.920 So basically Mexico remembered all of that and just didn't 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:37.120 have a lot of confidence that its citizens would be 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:40.040 treated fairly if they went back to the United States 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:44.720 to work. So Mexico insisted that any agreement spell out 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:48.440 protections for its citizens. One that would protect Mexican laborers 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:52.040 while in the United States and would protect Mexico's own 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:57.360 industries from suffering due to a lack of workers. Mexico did, however, 0:10:57.520 --> 0:11:00.840 see some potential benefits to allowing its citizens to work 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:04.240 in the United States. It was hoped that anyone who 0:11:04.360 --> 0:11:07.080 entered the program would return home with money that would 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:11.000 be injected into the Mexican economy. Running parallel with that 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:14.040 was the idea that Mexico's workers would learn new techniques 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:17.480 relating to agriculture and then bring those new techniques back 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:21.439 to Mexico. The result of this negotiation between Mexico and 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:24.600 the United States was the Brissero program, which was launched 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:28.079 in nineteen forty two by executive order and then formalized 0:11:28.080 --> 0:11:32.920 by a bilateral agreement on April nine. It would later 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:36.840 be amended by Public Law seventy eight and nineteen fifty one. 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:39.760 The basic terms of the Briscero program would be that 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:43.160 this would be non military work was not acceptable to 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:46.320 recruit Mexican nationals to work in agriculture and then put 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:50.320 them into the military service. Mexican nationals would be protected 0:11:50.360 --> 0:11:55.280 from discrimination. Employers would pay transportation and living expenses, as 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:58.760 well as a fair wage. Workers would get medical and 0:11:58.840 --> 0:12:03.000 sanitary services at no cost to them. People enrolling in 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:06.679 the Broscero program would sign a Spanish language contract and 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:10.079 be paid a fair wage that would not be less 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:13.040 than what was standard for Anglo workers in the area, 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:17.080 and workers under the age of fourteen were not allowed. 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:20.600 There were also protections if there was a shortage of work, 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:25.360 guaranteeing a subsistence level pay. If someone contracted with a 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:27.880 Mexican national but turned out not to have work for 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:31.200 them to do, a percentage of the broscero's pay was 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:33.800 also to be saved and returned to them once they 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:38.480 returned to Mexico. The criteria for the workers themselves were 0:12:38.480 --> 0:12:40.880 that they had to be young, healthy men who had 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:44.600 agricultural experience but did not own land of their own. 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:48.119 They also needed to have a letter from local authorities 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:51.199 saying that their labor wasn't needed where they actually lived, 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:53.240 and that was to try to diminish the impact on 0:12:53.320 --> 0:12:57.840 Mexicans Mexico's own labor force. Applicants would go to collection 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:01.440 points in Mexico, be fingerprinted, be sprayed down with d 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:03.959 d T, and then be taken to the United States. 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:08.760 In spite of concerns that Mexican nationals would take jobs 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:12.160 away from Americans. At first, this seemed like a mutually 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:15.560 beneficial agreement. The United States would get the farm labor 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:19.400 it needed, and Mexico would get new, modernized farming techniques, 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:22.840 an injection of cash into its economy, and jobs for 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:27.480 citizens who needed them. However, things took a turn for 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:30.720 the worst pretty much immediately. Most of the work to 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:34.679 be done was known as stoop labor. This was cultivation 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:37.920 work that was done using a short handled hoe stooped 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:41.800 over rose into the in the fields. This was grueling 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:44.480 and like it could have been done with a long 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:47.200 handled hoe instead of a short handled hoe that required 0:13:47.240 --> 0:13:49.520 you to literally stoop over, But for some reason people 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:55.240 thought a long handled hoo was damaging to the crops. Today, 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:59.599 the short handled hoe is regarded as an occupational hazard 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:04.440 and many states it is banned as unsafe. There were 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:08.559 also way more interested Mexican nationals than there were jobs, 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:13.440 and soon officials processing applications were accepting bribes to move 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:17.880 people ahead of the line. Recruitment efforts became prone to corruption. 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:22.760 People who didn't meet these qualifications for one reason or 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:26.120 another also started using the constant traffic back and forth 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:30.360 across the border to make the crossing themselves illegally, and 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:33.280 as was the case before, there were still plenty of 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:36.400 growers who were willing to hire these people for almost 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:40.600 no money. Unscrupulous growers also figured out that a lot 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:43.080 of the Mexican nationals who were actually part of the 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:46.280 Broscero program didn't have a lot of proficiency in English 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:48.920 and weren't aware of the pay and protections they were 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:52.360 legally entitled to under the terms of this program. This 0:14:52.520 --> 0:14:56.280 definitely was not universal. In various parts of the United States, 0:14:56.520 --> 0:15:00.760 broscero's organized themselves and when on strike, to protest wages 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:04.600 and poor treatment that were specifically outlawed in the Briscero 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:09.360 program's terms. Many growers flouted the rules of the program 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:12.520 and hired people who had crossed illegally to get around 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:16.480 having to worry about all of this. Mexico eventually refused 0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:19.520 to send workers to the entire state of Texas because 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:23.680 of flagrant hiring of unauthorized workers as well as other abuses. 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:30.239 So soon illegal border crossings were rampant and the employment 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:34.520 of people who had entered illegally was widespread. Wages started 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:37.600 to drop for basically everyone, because there were so many 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:40.240 low wage workers who had become part of the economy 0:15:40.280 --> 0:15:44.200 in the Southwest that minimum standard housing and medical care 0:15:44.280 --> 0:15:46.400 that was supposed to be part of this program also 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:49.240 didn't materialize, and a lot of people who actually were 0:15:49.360 --> 0:15:52.240 part of it wound up tightly packed together in barracks 0:15:52.280 --> 0:15:56.680 on canvas cots, where respiratory diseases and other illnesses spread 0:15:56.720 --> 0:16:01.440 like wildfire. Over the twenty two year life of this program, 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:05.000 four point five million Mexican nationals legally came to the 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:07.880 United States to work, some of them returning to the 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:12.680 US repeatedly under new contracts, but far more entered illegally 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:16.120 outside the bounds of the program. There was actually a 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:20.680 six thousand percent increase in illegal immigration between nineteen forty 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:26.080 four and nineteen fifty four. Support for the program, which 0:16:26.120 --> 0:16:29.560 had never been universal, started to wane after World War 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:32.120 Two was over and Americans who had survived the war 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:34.760 started to return home and to try to reclaim their 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:38.960 old jobs. The official wartime program ended on December thirty 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:42.160 one of nineteen forty seven, although the program continued to 0:16:42.240 --> 0:16:45.840 be extended for peacetime purposes for quite a while after that, 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:49.360 and eventually Mexico, fed up with what it saw as 0:16:49.400 --> 0:16:52.200 the United States refusal to enforce the terms of their 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:56.760 bilateral agreement, stopped participating by just declining to send any 0:16:56.760 --> 0:17:00.640 more workers through official channels. According to the Texas State 0:17:00.720 --> 0:17:05.800 Historical Association's Handbook of Texas, the US retaliated against Mexico's 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:09.879 non participation in nineteen fifty one by allowing thousands of 0:17:09.920 --> 0:17:13.760 people to enter the US illegally, arresting them and then, 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:16.840 rather than deporting them, turning them over to the Texas 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:21.440 Employment Commission to be put to work. By the nineteen sixties, 0:17:21.480 --> 0:17:25.000 the Broscero program was officially on the way out. Labor 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:28.359 organizations had become a lot more influential in policy and 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:31.480 had started advocating very vocally for jobs in the United 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:34.159 States to be filled by Americans and not by Mexicans. 0:17:34.760 --> 0:17:39.000 At the same time, increasing mechanization in the agriculture industry 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:41.280 meant that a lot of the physical labor that had 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:44.399 required this huge labor pool was disappearing. The need for 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:48.680 physical labor became a lot smaller. The Brassero program needed 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:52.880 to be reauthorized periodically, and there were increasingly contentious debates 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:56.480 whenever it came up for renewal. Its re authorizations in 0:17:56.600 --> 0:18:00.160 nineteen sixty one and nineteen sixty three in particular, were 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:03.800 extremely hotly debated. There was a lot of pressure to 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:06.920 end the program after a bus accident killed thirty two 0:18:06.920 --> 0:18:11.400 migrant workers in nineteen sixty three. The Burcero program eventually 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:15.879 expired the following year in nineteen sixty four. With the 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:19.000 abolition of the program. One of the things that proponents 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:21.879 had often said about it turned out apparently to be true. 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:24.119 A lot of people who were in favor of the 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:27.560 program insisted that American workers did not want to do 0:18:27.600 --> 0:18:29.920 this work, which is why it needed to be open 0:18:30.000 --> 0:18:33.679 to Mexican nationals. After the abolition of the program, there 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:37.440 were about five hundred and nineteen thousand unemployed people in California, 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:40.400 which should have been plenty to cover the seventy thousand 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:42.760 people who were needed to do stoop labor in the 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:46.760 agricultural industry, but the nature the nature of the work 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:49.639 and the wages that were that were offered meant that 0:18:49.680 --> 0:18:52.320 a lot of these jobs went unfilled and tons of 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:55.520 fruits and vegetables rotted in the fields, so that there 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:57.360 was a lot of argument that this should have been 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:01.720 like a gradual phase out rather than just an abrupt abolition. 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:04.439 As we said at the top of the show. Running 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:08.120 parallel to all of this was a mass deportation program 0:19:08.160 --> 0:19:12.480 focused on Mexican nationals called the horrible name Operation Went Back. 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:14.800 And we're going to talk about that after we pause 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:16.840 once again and take a break and hear from one 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:26.920 of our fantastic sponsors. To get back to Operation Went 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:30.439 Back as an example of how the United States thinking 0:19:30.480 --> 0:19:34.200 on immigration shifted. In the nineteen thirties and forties, President 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:38.160 Franklin D. Roosevelt combined two other government agencies to form 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:43.119 the Immigration and Naturalization Service in three This agency was 0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:47.159 originally part of the Department of Labor in NTY that 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:49.600 changed the I n S and the Border Patrol that 0:19:49.640 --> 0:19:51.919 fell under it moved from the Department of Labor to 0:19:51.960 --> 0:19:54.240 the Department of Justice. So with that the I n 0:19:54.400 --> 0:19:56.440 S and the Border Patrol were no longer about work. 0:19:56.800 --> 0:19:59.920 They were about law enforcement. And as we said up, 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:03.120 Ration Went Back was a mass deportation effort that came 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:05.480 along after the I and S moved to the Department 0:20:05.480 --> 0:20:09.800 of Justice. It's often portrayed as a swift decisive effort 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:13.000 to deport people who had entered the US illegally, but 0:20:13.040 --> 0:20:15.880 it was really part of a decades long effort that ran, 0:20:15.920 --> 0:20:19.439 as we said, parallel to most of the Burscero program. 0:20:19.480 --> 0:20:23.600 In the nineteen forties, for example, special Mexican deportation parties 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:27.640 were established to try to apprehend and deport Mexican migrant 0:20:27.640 --> 0:20:32.399 workers in There was an attempt to reinforce targeted portions 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:35.479 of the border with chain link fencing. In the nineteen 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:38.760 forties and nineteen fifties, some border patrol agents ran an 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:43.000 unsanctioned quote little barber shop, basically clippers that they carried 0:20:43.040 --> 0:20:45.919 with them to cut the hair of repeat immigration offenders, 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:51.880 sometimes in intentionally humiliating ways. In terms of the more 0:20:51.920 --> 0:20:54.880 above board efforts to control immigration, a lot of them 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:58.360 really were across national The United States wanted to keep 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:02.040 illegal immigration from driving down wages and causing housing and 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:05.240 social issues within its own borders, and Mexico wanted to 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:08.199 have enough workers to meet its own labor needs, and 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:12.280 also protected citizens from exploitation and discrimination while they were 0:21:12.320 --> 0:21:15.720 in the United States. In nineteen fifty one, a report 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:19.000 on Mexican migrant workers in the US pinned all sorts 0:21:19.040 --> 0:21:23.400 of social and economic ills on illegal immigration and characterized 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:27.560 the situation as an invasion. Soon, the US was diverting 0:21:27.600 --> 0:21:29.600 more and more of the border patrol and I n 0:21:29.840 --> 0:21:32.680 S to the Mexican border, more than doubling the number 0:21:32.680 --> 0:21:36.159 of agents that were stationed there. In between nineteen forty 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:38.600 three and nineteen fifty three, there were a lot more 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:42.840 people apprehended in illegal border crossings. The number rose from 0:21:42.840 --> 0:21:46.240 eleven thousand, seven hundred and fifteen in nineteen forty three 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:49.840 to eight hundred and eighty five thousand, five hundred eighty 0:21:49.920 --> 0:21:53.640 seven in nineteen fifty three, with Mexicans making up more 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:57.720 and more of those apprehended. At the same time, though, 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:01.400 the United States didn't actually increase the immigration and Naturalization 0:22:01.440 --> 0:22:03.680 services budgets, so even though there were more agents on 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:06.639 the Mexican border, there were fewer agents overall, with the 0:22:06.680 --> 0:22:10.200 forces numbers dropping a third between nineteen two and nineteen 0:22:10.240 --> 0:22:14.000 fifty one. When Dwight the Eisenhower took office as president 0:22:14.040 --> 0:22:17.920 in nineteen fifty three, it's estimated that three million Mexican 0:22:18.000 --> 0:22:21.720 nationals in the US had entered the country illegally, but 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:25.399 previous efforts to deport them had increasingly stalled out because 0:22:25.440 --> 0:22:28.560 so many farms and ranches were dependent on this illicit 0:22:28.640 --> 0:22:32.080 labor pool. In the words of Walt Edwards, who served 0:22:32.119 --> 0:22:34.560 in the Border Patrol from nineteen fifty one to nineteen 0:22:34.600 --> 0:22:38.360 sixty four, quote, when we caught illegal aliens on farms 0:22:38.359 --> 0:22:41.960 and ranches, the farmer or rancher would often call and complain, 0:22:42.640 --> 0:22:45.480 and depending on how politically connected they were, there would 0:22:45.480 --> 0:22:50.480 be political intervention. Yeah. That political intervention was basically getting 0:22:50.480 --> 0:22:54.040 their workers out of jail and turning away from the 0:22:54.080 --> 0:22:55.919 fact that they were not supposed to be in the 0:22:55.960 --> 0:23:01.639 United States. In nineteen fifty four, Eisenhower pointed General Joseph Swing, 0:23:01.920 --> 0:23:04.720 also known as Jumping Joe, as the commissioner of the 0:23:04.760 --> 0:23:09.600 Immigration and Naturalization Service. Swing started transferring immigration officials who 0:23:09.600 --> 0:23:11.840 had spent a long time in the Southwest to other 0:23:11.960 --> 0:23:14.200 parts of the country with the hope of breaking all 0:23:14.200 --> 0:23:17.960 those social and political ties to all the local farmers, ranchers, 0:23:18.000 --> 0:23:20.240 and political big wigs that was leading the service to 0:23:20.400 --> 0:23:26.919 not actually enforce immigration. Then, on June nine four, Swing 0:23:26.960 --> 0:23:30.919 announced the commencement of Operation Went Back. One arm of 0:23:30.960 --> 0:23:34.320 the operation was meant to physically apprehend and remove people 0:23:34.359 --> 0:23:38.120 who had illegally immigrated into the United States. The other 0:23:38.280 --> 0:23:41.280 was meant to publicize this effort to make sure people 0:23:41.280 --> 0:23:43.919 who weren't in the country legally knew about it and 0:23:43.960 --> 0:23:47.280 see the deportation force as a threat. A lot of 0:23:47.280 --> 0:23:51.240 this publicity deliberately exaggerated the size and aggressiveness of the 0:23:51.280 --> 0:23:54.800 deportation force in the hope of scaring people into leaving 0:23:54.800 --> 0:24:01.480 the country voluntarily. On June seventy four, immigration officials started 0:24:01.480 --> 0:24:04.280 the actual sweeps to apprehend and deport people who had 0:24:04.359 --> 0:24:08.920 illegally immigrated. About seven hundred and fifty immigration agents moved 0:24:09.000 --> 0:24:12.239 north through California and Arizona. They started in those few 0:24:12.320 --> 0:24:16.080