Historical Perspective on Immigration

1
Historical Perspective on ImmigrationMerchants
of Laborby Ernesto GalarzaThe Mexican Bracero
Story

• Jesus Hernandez
• Melissa Hernandez
• 2/15/2013

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U.S. Immigration Policy has Supported
theExploitation of the Immigrant working poor
on an Industrial Scale.

• Its easy for some to put all the blame for the
  broken immigration system on the illegals
• Dont reward those that broke our laws some say
• Some say secure the border first before doing
  anything to recognize the new immigrants
• We are a nation of laws its claimed
• We are a Christian nation some claim
• But how aligned is our conduct to these espoused
  valuesnow and throughout our history?

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Historical perspectiveMerchants of Laborby
Ernesto GalarzaThe Mexican Bracero Story

• Mexicans who left their homeland in the six
  decades beginning in 1880one of the major mass
  movements of people in the western hemisphere
• Can you think of other mass human migrations in
  history? What were the economics involved?
• the power and influence of big money?

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Historical perspectiveMerchants of Laborby
Ernesto GalarzaThe Mexican Bracero Story

• For three and a half centuries Mexicans had lived
  within a caste-bound, immobile society molded on
  Spanish colonial traditions further confined by
  desert, jungle, sea and medievalism. In the
  1920s
• In the state of Jalisco, 96.2 of the farm
  families owned no land
• In the state of Veracruz, 98.9 owned no land
• In the state of Mexico, 99.8 of the
  countryside belonged to less than 1 of the rural
  families

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Historical perspectiveMerchants of Laborby
Ernesto GalarzaThe Mexican Bracero Story

• Opression by the Hacendado
• Peones ascasillados The permanent labor force
  of the Acendado. These peons were held in
  bondage by such devices as the company store.
  The store was the only source of supply for the
  limited needs of the laboring community. Outside
  tradesmen were excluded. Each peon had a line of
  credit for their necessities. Credit was a form
  of incentive wages calculated to mount through
  the years into an obligation of servitude. The
  hacendado could demand on the death of the peon
  that his sons assume not only the tasks but also
  the debts of the insolvent father.
• Piones de tarea the seasonal workers for the
  Acendado. Their meager wages were paid in cash,
  but barely subsisted on small plots of ground.
  The control of the Hacendado was exercised by
  their control of the best land and water supply.
  Seed could only be purchased from the hacienda

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Historical perspectiveMerchants of Laborby
Ernesto GalarzaThe Mexican Bracero Story

• Finally a revolution
• In 1910, a handful of disenfranchised
  intellectuals called upon the peons to satisfy
  your needs with a hoe, if possible, and if not,
  with a gun. Fighters like Emilio Zapata led
  peasants in the 1913 agrarian revolution. The
  land was seized and redistributed. In December
  1920, the Ley de Ejidos restored the communal
  form of land ownership and use to its ancestral
  rank. In the next four decades, over 100,000,000
  acres of land changed hands
• By 1937, the result of the agrarian revolution
  had resulted in several Mexicos the agrarian
  collectivism, rural yeomanry, incipient
  industrialism, foreign capital, the military
  caste, and the church a stalemate among them
  had set in. Zapata was assassinated in 1918.
  The survivors of the old regime had kept much of
  their liquid cash as well as the choicest of
  lands. They moved into positions of vantage in
  the new order. In the 1920s the nation was
  plunged into a struggle for power between rival
  generals and the fighting continued in the
  country side to discourage the ejido. The
  fighting was still taking toll on the peasants
  forty years after the constitutional measures for
  the breakup of the haciendas. In 1810 and again
  1910 the revolution was one of people wanting in,
  not out of the ground they lived on. Migration
  came only after defeat, and its goal for many was
  California.

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Historical perspectiveMerchants of Laborby
Ernesto GalarzaThe Mexican Bracero Story

• Migration by drift
• The end of the US/Mexican War in 1848 left the
  two countries a barrier to migration consisting
  of a desert 400 miles widerugged terrain through
  which neither rivers nor pleasant prairies made
  passage convenient. Northwestward, the Sierra
  Madre Occidental encloses the nation, its ranges
  backstopped by badlands of mesquite and sand.
  The narrow strip of coastal plain is also sealed
  on the northern end by desert. Furthermore,
  passage was barred by hostile tribes and the hot
  climate was uninviting to the people from the
  temperate uplands.
• This barrier existed until President Porfirio
  Diaz and foreign capital introduced 15,000 miles
  of railways to carry gold, silver, copper, lead
  and other minerals abroad. Railroading competed
  for the indentured peons who were often ransomed
  from the haciendas to work on the railroad
  tracks. This progress of construction and
  transport became an escape valve to north. At
  its far end was the dollar work, no more
  agreeable than the menial labor of the hacienda,
  but payable in hard currency that outmatched the
  peso 21.

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Historical perspectiveMerchants of Laborby
Ernesto GalarzaThe Mexican Bracero Story

• The water balloon effect
• Between 1911 and 1921 legal entries to the United
  States rose to nearly 250000 1921 to 1930 it
  reached 459,287 and an additional 22,319 in the
  decade of 1931-1940.
• Wages played an important part in stimulating the
  flow of illegal labor when the U.S. began
  limiting the number of legal entrants. In the
  1940s some farmers paid 60 cents a day without
  board or housing. The Mexican wetback,
  Department of Justice agents reported, was at
  the mercy of the employers in terms of wages and
  housing. The wetbacks were differentiated
  from the common run of illegals, serving in
  specialized operations and becoming stable,
  regular employeesoften referred to as
  specials.
• Gradually, wetbacks transitioned from the fields
  to canneries and processors where they obtained a
  social security card and other advantages.
  Eventually, many were enticed into other work in
  restaurants, hotels, construction, mills and
  factories. The Wetback tended to show all the
  adaptive powers of a capable human being, useful
  and exploitable in a variety of trades and
  occupations.

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Historical perspectiveMerchants of Laborby
Ernesto GalarzaThe Mexican Bracero Story

• The water balloon effect
• The period of 1900 to 1940 was one of migration
  by drift, in contrast to the bracero program that
  began in 1942resulting in The creation of the
  Un-commonwealth of California
• It began with the gold rush of the 1840s
  creating large fortunes and big cities
• With the decline of mining and the increase in
  farming, Mother Earth superseded the Mother Lode
• The right environment facilitated the momentum to
  rapid opening of the west
• Mechanization of farm production was leaping
  forward able to sustain growing international
  trade
• The locomotive brought a revolution in freight
  transportation allowing farming at a commercial
  scale
• The end of the American Civil Warthe Union was
  well consolidated
• President Lincolns success in keeping the
  nation united reduced political barriers to
  accessing the mass markets developing is the east
  coast
• Feudalism in Mexico was breaking up
• The Mexican revolution of 1910 smashed the
  hacendados and hundreds of thousands of
  liberated poor migrated north

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Historical perspectiveMerchants of Laborby
Ernesto GalarzaThe Mexican Bracero Story

• The un-commonwealth of CA
• In California, the hacienda concept had shifted
  from a political and social institution to an
  economic one.
• Aggressive Americans who supplanted the Mexican
  ranchero assembled huge private estates
• The end of the 1848 war between the US and
  Mexico had left the workers on one side of the
  border and the capital and best land on the
  otherMigration undertook to correct that
• The commercial agriculture in California with
  bursts and slumps of seasonal labor demand
  generated a response from the Mexican migranta
  massive dose of economic energy was the response
• 1942-the spontaneous and irregular migration was
  replaced by one that was supervised and regulated
  by governmentThe Bracero Program

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Historical perspectiveMerchants of Laborby
Ernesto GalarzaThe Mexican Bracero Story

• The Pooling of labor
• George Santayanas reminder Dont forget, that
  among the raw materials of industry, one of the
  most important is man
• Chinese were first brought in to work on railways
  and mines. In 1886 Carey McWilliams estimated
  that 30,000 Chinese worked as harvest hands in
  CA.
• Negroes were unsuccessfully tapped after the
  Chinese Exclusion Act.
• Japanese were key farm labor force between 1890
  and 1910 (72,000) until bitter racial hostility
  errupted.
• Filipinos were recruited in the 1920sover 25,000
  by 1930 until ill feelings brewed into riots
  against them in 1930.
• Southern Americans (white and Negro) followed.
  130,000 came to California Not more than one
  generation could be counted on to accept farm
  employment under any terms.

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Historical perspectiveMerchants of Laborby
Ernesto GalarzaThe Mexican Bracero Story

• The Agricultural Labor Bureaus
• The standardization of wage rates became the
  primary purpose of the labor bureaus.
• Labor protests were dealt with systematic
  violence by the Associated Farmers, constituted
  in 1934 to to foster and encourage respect for
  and to maintain law and order, to promote the
  prompt, orderly and efficient administration of
  justice
• The 1928 strike of the Confederacion de Uniones
  Obreras was defeated by arrests and deportations.
  It led local authorities to use
  extra-constitutional methods to deal with the
  strikers Professor Robert Glass Cleland noted.
• In 1947 Dr. Cleland wrote Californias
  industrial agriculture can exhibit all the
  customary weaponsgas, goon squads, propaganda ,
  bribery.

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Historical perspectiveMerchants of Laborby
Ernesto GalarzaThe Mexican Bracero Story

• The impact of World War
• The Manpower Crisis of 1942Agricultural manual
  labor was continuously being drained by
  manufacturing, transportation and service trades
  connected to the war effort
• This crisis led to the first migrant labor
  agreement between Mexico and the United
  StatesManaged migration under Public Law 78
  (1942-51)
• Nov. 15, 1946, after victory in the war, US
  Department of State notified Mexico of its
  desire to terminate the agreement.
• Employers continued to plead an acute need for
  Braceros and on their behalf recruitment was
  extended to 1949
• 1947 Wage disagreement between the two
  governments threaten the good neighbor policy
  between the two nations.
• Word was passed to braceros across the border
  that work was available and that the Mexican
  Government intended to close the boarder.
• Illegal immigration began to across the boarder
  greeted with formality by Border Patrol and
  trucked to the fields.

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Historical perspectiveMerchants of Laborby
Ernesto GalarzaThe Mexican Bracero Story

• The Bracero vs. the Specials
• While the Bracero recruitment grew rapidly from
  1942 to 1945 the hiring of illegals grew apace as
  growers sought to exploit both types of labor
• Employers chose experienced illegals and sought
  to prolong their employment by more than
  customary precautions against arrest. Wetbacks
  became the specials who returned to the same
  employer after a mischance of being deported.
• 1949 US and Mexico agreed to deny Bracero
  certification to employers that continued to use
  illegals.
• Mexico was responding to labor shortages in
  northern Mexican states agribusiness.
• Despite efforts to force legal immigration, on
  Jan. 23, 1954 hiring of illegals got underway
  again in key border passages.
• Mexican police squads closed on the mobs trying
  to cross into American territory.
• U.S. border patrolmen extended a helping hand to
  open the gates for the illegal entrants
• The imperial Valley Press described it as a
  riotous success as illegal immigrants were
  bussed to the fields

15
Historical perspectiveThe manipulation of
theworking poor continues

• Consider recent responses to shortage of
  agricultural workers
• After the 1986 Amnesty, many immigrants that were
  not able to get legal status, left the country
  convinced that no one would hire them.
• 1988-89 Agricultural labor shortages caused the
  agricultural industry to advertise job
  opportunities south of the boarder causing a
  surge of immigrants to Washington State.
  Stranded immigrants needed to be bussed home
  after courts ruled that the industry had
  over-promised job opportunities
• 2010 WA Governor Christine Gregoire lobbied
  congress to ease off on deportations when the
  industry began to fear a labor crisis in the
  upcoming harvest season.
• The working poor continues to manipulated,
  exploitedand blamed!

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GraciasThank You
Lets raise our consciousness Lets stop
separating families Lets pass a just
immigration reform