Chapter Fifteen

In the last chapter, we examined the effects of immigration from Mexico to the Southwest at the turn of this century. We have seen that the events of the Mexican Revolution tended to push many Mexicans toward the Southwest. At the same time, other factors acted as a magnet which pulled people to the United States.

Chief among these forces were conditions created by the entry of the United States into World War I. The Great War required a vast input of manpower in the armed services and the blossoming defense industries. This created a demand for labor in other, more traditional areas of endeavor. Since work in war-related industries usually pays higher wages than many other occupations, the general labor force moves into these industries and lower paying jobs, however essential, often go unfilled in wartime.

During World War I, the labor shortage was particularly severe in agriculture. Farm laborers left the fields in droves to seek the higher wages of the defense industry. At the same time, the United States experienced a great period of economic expansion. In the Southwest, this meant the expansion of commercial agriculture, the establishment of railroads and the development of a number of industries, including mining. Thus at the very time the war was taking people away from the Southwest, the need for labor was increasing in the region. Mexican immigrants, driven by the revolution and attracted by the prospect of employment, filled the gap.

A number of other events help explain why Mexico has become the chief supplier of labor in the United States during this century. Even today, these events provide reasons for the fact that Mexicans constitute the main source of cheap labor in this country. And the roots of the matter are found in the past.

Land Grants

In the early period of colonization and the people settled on land that was taken settlement of the Southwest (16O0-185O), from the Indians. This land, which then "belonged" to Spain and later to Mexico, was often parceled out to the settlers in the form of land grants. These grants, some of them covering hundreds of thousands of acres, were awarded to individuals or were given in common to a group of people. Those who did not settle on land grants would settle in the "public" domain.

The Treaty of Guadalupe-Ridalgo, which ended the war between Mexico and the United States, guaranteed the conquered people a number of rights, including that of possession of their land. But the Anglo-Americans, utilizing a number of legal, illegal, and sometimes unscrupulous means, soon separated most Mexicans from their land. It must be noted that while Americans consider land as a capital commodity to be owned, bought, sold and exploited, many other people hold a different view. The Mexicans-and Spaniards and Indians before them-believed the land was to be used, obviously, but not necessarily as a capital commodity.

Moreover, the American system of land ownership involved accurate surveys and complicated titles of ownership and deeds of transfer. The Mexican system, dating from the Spanish colonial period, was not always that accurate or substantiated by legal documents. Land grants, if recorded on paper, were often loosely described. A property might be said to extend from the peak of such a mountain to the mouth of such a river, encompassing so many acres more or less. This kind of description, typical of the colonial period, is very different from an exact geographical survey measured in degrees and feet. Furthermore, locating the records proved difficult. Many of the land grants were deposited and recorded in Spain, others in Mexico and still others in Santa Fe, New Mexico. To further complicate the situation, one of the territorial governors of New Mexico, William Pile, sold a large portion of the colonial and Mexican archives as wastepaper in 1869. It is also reported that William Arny, acting governor in 1866, placed the archives in an "outhouse," letting the documents rot.

Consequently, many people could not produce legal title to the lands they owned. Even though the United States did establish a land claims court, many of the lands passed into the United States public domain for lack of adequate documentation of ownership. Of the more than thirty-five million acres claimed under land titles, the Court of Private Land Claims had approved a little over two million acres when it adjourned in 1904. The result of this situation was that many people lost their land and were thus pushed out into the labor supply and a wage economy.

Immigration Laws

Immigration laws offer another reason for Mexicos important role in supplying cheap labor. The United States is a nation of immigrants. After its formation as a nation, the great majority of people who came to U.S. shores came from northern Europe. This has been known historically as the old immigration. After 1850 new waves of immigrants came to this country. In increasing numbers, they migrated from southern Europe. All of these immigrants, seeking a better life in one way or another, supplied labor for a rapidly growing nation. When new sources of labor were needed, particularly in the Southwest, the United States turned to China and later to Japan. But Americans soon came to believe that Orientals would not make good citizens and, in fact, constituted a threat to national security. The Chinese were blocked by the exclusion acts of the 1880s and the Japanese immigration was curtailed by the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907. The Philippines and Korea as well as Mexico then became chief sources of cheap, immigrant labor for the United States.

The first formal U.S. immigration laws establishing quotas were passed in 1921 and codified in 1924. These nationality acts set quotas stipulating the number of immigrants who could enter the United States from any given country. These quotas favored people from northern Europe and disfavored, to a degree, people from southern Europe. People from Asia were almost entirely excluded. The nationality acts, however, did not establish quotas for people from the Western Hemisphere. Thus, unlimited numbers of people could enter the United States from Canada, Mexico, Central and South America. Since Mexico is contiguous to the United States, Mexico then became the chief source of cheap labor.

It must be noted that between 1849 and 1924 the border between Mexico and the United States was not policed and people of both nations tended to go back and forth to either country without difficulty. In 1924, however, the Border Patrol was established and now that imaginary line called the border became a real barrier for people going back and forth between Mexico and the United States. The need for documentation suddenly became a bothersome reality. And although large numbers of Mexicans were admitted legally to the United States, others, in increasing numbers, began to bypass the paperwork after 1924 and entered the country illegally.

The Great Depression

During the First World War and into the 1920s, the United States enjoyed a period of great prosperity and economic expansion. The economic boom declined in the mid-1920s and ended abruptly with the 1929 stock market crash. The Great Depression which followed lasted about a decade. The effects of this Depression were disastrous to most of the population, but particularly to the Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the United States.

Many persons whom we now label Mexican Americans were here before there was a United States, and their descendants became citizens when the Southwest was conquered during the Mexican-American War. Many others immigrated to this country from Mexico between 1850 and 1900. Thus, as the Depression began, there were several hundred thousand Mexican Americans as well as Mexican legal residents in the United States.

As the Depression became more severe in the early 1930s, millions of people were jobless and being aided somewhat by the first faltering attempts at public welfare. Throughout the Southwest and such cities as Gary, Indiana; Detroit, Michigan; Toledo, Ohio, where there were large concentrations of Mexicans and Mexican Americans, public officials decided that it would be cheaper to send the Mexican legal aliens back to Mexico than to carry them on the public welfare rolls. Thus, a system of repatriation began.

During the first four years of the 1930s, well over four hundred thousand Mexicans were repatriated to Mexico. Most of those repatriated Mexican citizens were legal residents of the United States; many were American citizens-that is, Mexican Americans. Some had lived in this country thirty or forty years and had established their homes and their roots here. Many families were broken up, for in some cases either the father or mother, or both, were alien, but the children, having been born and raised in this country, were American citizens and allowed to stay while their parents were repatriated. To be sure, some Mexican aliens departed voluntarily, but those who were forcibly removed and those whose families were disrupted suffered enormous hardships during this period.

Needless to say, immigration from Mexico during the 1930s was reduced to a trickle. It did not begin again in any significant number until the 1940s with the advent of the Second World War.

World War II

The United States entered World War II in December 1941. But the country had been preparing for war at least since the European conflict began in 1939. The situation was comparable to that which existed during the First World War. Many men, previously part of a more rudimentary labor force, were absorbed by the armed forces and rapidly expanding defense industry. As a result, the war created a labor shortage, particularly in agriculture. The United States once again turned to Mexico as a supplier of labor. But this time the two nations entered into a formal agreement by which Mexican laborers might be employed.

Even before America's entry into the war and as early as 1940, growers in some southwestern states were petitioning United States agencies for permission to use foreign labor (Craig, 1971: pp.37-38). A precedent for the importation of foreign labor had already been set in World War I. After the United States entered the Second World War, growers and their spokesmen appealed to the secretaries of agriculture, state, and labor for foreign workers, but now the appeal was not so much on their own behalf but, rather, for the national defense.

In April, 1942, under pressure from California beet growers, the immigration service formed an Interagency Committee to study the question of agriculture labor. Composed of representatives from the War Manpower Commission and the Departments of Labor, State, Justice and Agriculture, the Committee produced a plan for recruiting Mexican labor. (Craig, 1971:
pp.39-40)

On June 1, 1942, Mexico declared war on the Axis powers and immediately thereafter the Department of State was asked to approach Mexico officially on the question of the importation of foreign labor. During the subsequent discussions it appeared that Mexico doubted that a legitimate labor scarcity existed and viewed these discussions as efforts to obtain cheap labor. Mexican officials remembered and were still concerned about the ignominious deportation and repatriation of Mexicans which occurred in the 1930s and were anxious to prevent another such episode. Moreover, they did not want to permit their workers to be sent to "discrimination-prone" states and felt there might be a danger to Mexicos economic development if many thousands of their workers left for the United States. On the other hand, the Mexican committee was assured that Mexico would have a strong voice in the two-nation agreement. Presumably, Mexico would benefit from the knowledge that the workers would acquire during their visit to the United States. Through such an agreement, Mexico could contribute to the Allied war effort and would benefit economically.

The Bracero Agreement

A government-to-government accord was reached in July 1942. This came to be known as the Bracero agreement. The two nations signed the agreement on August 4, 1942. Under the terms of the agreement, Mexico would permit its nationals to come to work in the United States for temporary periods under stipulated conditions. In a sense, this was part of Mexicos contribution to the war effort. Both nations accepted the agreement in good faith. It was expected to be a temporary effort, lasting presumably for the duration of the war.

Specific conditions governed the manner under which the Mexican nationals were to be brought to the United States. Those conditions stipulated methods of recruitment, means of transportation, standards for health care, wages, housing, food, and the number of working hours. There was also a stipulation that there should be no discrimination against the Mexican nationals.

The agreement which provided temporary wartime labor for American agriculture came to be known as the Bracero program. Although it was meant to be temporary, it lasted much longer than the war itself. Established by executive order in 1942, it was enacted into Public Law 78 in 1951 and was not terminated until December 1 964-more than nineteen years after the end of World War II.

Recruitment

Under the original agreement, the recruitment of braceros was to take place in certain centers in Mexico. Once the workers had been approved, they were to be transported to those areas in the United States that had requested them. The recruitment centers themselves became crowded with thousands of Mexicans who were unemployed and who wanted to go to the United States.
Because of the overwhelming numbers of applicants, it became very difficult to obtain permits to enter the program. In many instances a bribery system (a mordida) was set up. Often those who learned the ropes and could bribe the officials were selected as braceros. This procedure left many thousands of Mexicans without an opportunity to join the program. Many of those who were not chosen came to the United States illegally. The number of illegals who entered the United States during the tenure of the Bracero program was equal to or surpassed the number of braceros.

Effect on Domestic Labor

According to the agreement, braceros were not to be brought into areas where domestic labor was available. They were to be paid the prevailing wage for agricultural work in the region, but not less than fifty cents per hour. More often than not, the minimum wage of fifty cents per hour became the maximum wage offered. When domestic laborers refused to accept such low wages, for they could hardly afford to support a family on fifty cents an hour, local officials could claim a shortage of laborers and request braceros. Thus, many domestic laborers who might have worked in agriculture for a decent wage were displaced by Mexican nationals. To the further detriment of both U.S. citizens and braceros, many of the agricultural enterprises of the Southwest hired illegal aliens at wages even lower than fifty cents an hour.

The Bracero program was a great boon to American agriculture. The industry preferred to employ Mexican nationals rather than American citizens, although many of the Americans (whether or not of Mexican descent) were seasonal farm workers or migratory workers.
The advantages of using nationals in agriculture were many. In the first place, the wages were set by the growers, not in a supply-and-demand situation and certainly not in collective bargaining. In addition, seasonal farm workers who were American citizens quite often worked as families. This meant that the growers had to supply housing for a family unit-that is, a man and his wife and several children. But the Mexican nationals were all men and they came in groups. It is much easier to provide transportation and supply barracks or rooms for single men than it is to supply housing for a family unit. The Mexican nationals could be transported from farm to farm, county to county, state to state, without any difficulty. They could be brought in and moved out as they were needed. In contrast, American migratory labor cannot be managed that easily, for it usually involves a crew leader, and people traveling in family groups.

The Bracero program is one of the several instances in which the U.S. government became a supplier of labor in direct competition with the usual supply and demand situation. In a real sense, the government was subsidizing the growers by supplying them with cheap labor. An American citizen wanting to work in agriculture had to compete with the whole Bracero program and, consequently, with the U.S. government. Needless to say, this proved quite advantageous to the American grower. Although the Bracero agreement contained stipulations with regard to health, housing, food, wages, and working hours, most were disregarded by both the U.S. government and the growers. The requirement that Mexican nationals not be discriminated against was also disregarded. In the state of Texas alone, Mexicans were discriminated against to such an extent that the Mexican government forbade the use of its nationals in the fields in Texas.

Texan growers circumvented this ban by hiring "wetbacks" rather than braceros. The wetbacks were more manageable than the braceros because, as illegal aliens, they had absolutely no rights in a foreign country. Therefore, the questions concerning wages, health, housing, food and so forth did not apply.

Prolongation of the Program

When the war ended in 1945, American men began to return from the armed forces. The defense industries began to lay off workers, and, of course, it could no longer be said that a shortage of labor existed. The growers, however, liked the wartime arrangement and persisted in their efforts to keep the Bracero program going. As a result of the growers' powerful influence in Congress, the program survived for nearly twenty years after the end of the war.

TABLE 2

TEMPORARY CONTRACT LABOR FROM

MEXICO*

TOTAL 5,050,093

*Figures correspond to fiscal years. Although the Bracero program ended in December 1964, figures from 1966 to 1968 correspond to aliens admitted and reported under the same category which entitles the table.

Sources: Period from 1942 to 1956 based on figures taken from Mexican Labor Hearings (House Committee on Agriculture) 1958, pp.450-52 as quoted by Hancock 1959:17).

Figures for 1957 and 1958 based on Report of the Select Commission on Western Hemisphere Immigration (1968:98).

Figures from 1959 to 1968 based on data provided by the 1968 Annual Report of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, p.73

While it is true that the Bracero program was begun as an emergency measure to help the United States during the war, a legitimate and laudable aim, one cannot help but ask why the program lasted so long when the war itself lasted only from the end of 1941 to the summer of 1945. As a matter of fact, the lowest number of braceros who were hired in the program was hired during the war years and the largest number was hired many years after the war had ended. Table 2 gives an indication of the numbers of Mexican nationals who were brought to the United States for temporary seasonal farm work. During the twenty-two-year period, over five million braceros were employed in the United States.

Commuters

Another category of persons in and from Mexico who had been a source of cheap labor for the United States is the so-called "commuters." Commuters reside in Mexico but work in the United States. These persons, the great majority of whom are citizens of Mexico, at some time have been issued a visa (popularly called a "green card") to come to the United States to live and work, but they have chosen to keep their residence in Mexico.

Some commuters come into the United States to live and work for a month, six months, or a year and then go back to Mexico. They may return to the United States at a later time. The average commuter, however, comes to work in the United States every day, and returns to his home in Mexico in the evening. Early in the morning in Brownsville, Texas, one can stand at the International Bridge and watch the stream of commuters arriving from Matamoros. A similar sight can be seen at El Pasos International Bridge, where thousands of commuters cross the border from Juárez each day. The same daily procession takes place from Mexicali to Calexico, and Tijuana to San Ysidro, California. If one goes back to the same points between six and nine in the evening the same people can be seen returning to their homes in Mexico.

The commuters are legal entrants to this country-but legally, they should also live in the United States. They are generally employed in low-skill jobs or service jobs-as agricultural workers, bus boys, waitresses, elevator operators, store clerks, dishwashers, maintenance men, bartenders, and construction workers. Some, of course, hold skilled jobs. But few would be found in managerial or professional jobs. The number of people thus employed is estimated to be from sixty thousand to four hundred thousand. It is difficult to give an accurate figure because the United States does not keep very accurate records and because the number of commuters fluctuates considerably from day to day.

Most of the people who live in Mexico but who earn their living in the United States tend to spend most of their earnings on the American side of the border. For this reason, the Chamber of Commerce and the business community generally favor the commuter situation. In addition, these people can be hired at wages lower than those demanded by American citizens for the same position.

Opposition to the practice comes from the labor unions and from the people who are displaced by the commuters (that is, American citizens, in many instances Mexican Americans), and other people who see an injustice in the low wages and the exploitation of this labor. It is said by those who oppose the practice that commuters depress the wages in the border area, that they displace the citizen labor (which in many instances becomes migratory and ends up in the northern part of the United States), and that they interfere with organized labor's attempt at unionization of domestic labor. One thing seems very clear: when you have little industry on the American side of the border and when you have a condition of generally low wages, high unemployment, little unionization, and a labor surplus, there is no question that commuters do disturb the local situation with regard to labor and wages.

This is not a new situation nor a recent occurrence in the United States. Commuters have been in this country since the 1920s. By such custom, tradition and the interpretation of the law, those persons have been permitted to live in Mexico and work in the United States, contrary to the letter of the law. And Mexicans are not the only commuters who live in another country and work in the United States. Along the northern border, a number of Canadians come into the United States every day to work in various industries.

Most of the Canadian commuters are concentrated in the Detroit area and farther east. In contrast to the Mexican commuters, most of the Canadians work at skilled and industrial jobs and therefore belong to unions, which means their wages are higher, their jobs more secure, the benefits greater. But American workers do not consider the Canadians as big a threat to labor as they do the commuters from Mexico. One explanation is that the Great Lakes region is an industrialized area and jobs are more plentiful and varied than in much of the Southwest. Another is that Canada is a relatively rich country with a small population while Mexico is considered poor and densely populated. Thus, unemployment in Mexico is higher than in Canada and the need to cross the border into the United States in search of job opportunities is presumably greater.

Illegal Aliens

With the establishment of the Border Patrol in 1924, the "open" border began to disappear. As we indicated earlier, the immigration law of 1921 described the type of person who could enter the United States from any given country and stipulated the conditions of his entrance. This meant that persons entering the United States from any country would be subject to some scrutiny. Consequently, Mexicans could no longer go back and forth freely between the United States and Mexico unless they met certain conditions and obtained the proper legal documents for entry. If a person were apprehended in the United States without papers or documentation, he would be termed an illegal and would be subject to immediate deportation.

The Mexican illegal alien has been popularly called a "wetback." The term originated from the fact that the Rio Grande forms much of the long border between the United States and Mexico, from El Pasoto Brownsville, Texas, and many Mexican illegal aliens have crossed into the United States by swimming or wading the river. But the term "wetback" is deceiving because most of the Mexicans who come into the United States without legal documents do not swim or wade across the river.

Factors Involved

In the case of the Mexican illegal alien, one must examine history and the fact that much of the southwestern United States is Mexican territory conquered by the United States. Many Mexicans have had and still have friends and relatives on the U.S. side of the border. In many instances what separated these people was merely an imaginary survey line that by chance made some members of a family Mexican and other members American citizens. Even after the border was defined, people crossed back and forth freely for several decades, often working in one country and living in the other. A common economy developed. This changed suddenly with the passage of the nationality acts and the establishment of the Border Patrol. But the habits and attitudes of people do not change easily.

Although there have been no quotas as to the number of Mexicans who can come into the United States legally, the nationality acts do make certain stipulations as to the kinds of people who can enter this country. These stipulations have to do with the moral character of the individual, his educational achievements, the skills he presents to the labor market, and his economic independence. Other requirements suggest that people who are feeble-minded, idiots, lunatics, prostitutes, or persons likely to be public charges, cannot legally enter the United States. The numbers of Mexicans who apply for immigration are so large that the consular offices generally have tremendously long waiting lists for processing applications. Thus, many people who do not care to wait several years before they can become legal immigrants do, in fact, decide to come into the United States without inspection and become illegal aliens.

In looking at the pattern of illegal immigration to the United States from Mexico, one can see that the years when the largest numbers of illegals are apprehended coincide with the periods of economic prosperity in the United States or periods of depression and high unemployment in Mexico. Such conditions in Mexico are quite often related to natural phenomena such as droughts, tornadoes, or floods.

Numbers Apprehended

It must be noted that we are not talking about the number of illegals from Mexico who come into the United States. No one knows that figure year in and year out. Rather, we must consider the number of illegal aliens apprehended by the authorities-a figure which is fairly accurate. But it must also be borne in mind that some illegals may have entered the United States several times during one year and been deported every time while others have entered repeatedly and not been apprehended. The figures tell us only the number of apprehensions.

The fluctuations in the number of illegals from Mexico who have been apprehended over the years are shown in Table 3. The largest numbers of illegals were apprehended when the Bracero program was in operation. But apprehensions rose sharply in 1954, when the United States government became very concerned about the wetbacks and started what was called "Operation Wetback." Over one million Mexican illegal aliens were apprehended in that year alone. The number of illegal aliens entering in subsequent years declined but began to increase again about the middle of the 1960s and, at the present time, is increasing at a very rapid rate. This movement of illegals is related, of course, to economic conditions in Mexico and the United States.

The Population Explosion

The phenomenon of illegal Mexican aliens in the United States can also be explained largely by the population explosion of this century. The population of Mexico has been increasing rapidly over the past several years due to a high birth rate. Mexico has been industrializing very rapidly in the last twenty years and making great strides in providing jobs, schools, and housing, but its development has not been able to keep abreast of its growing population. It is still a relatively poor country. Moreover the people of Mexico, as in other developing countries, have been moving from the rural areas to the cities in search of an improved standard of living. Mexican urbanization has centered in two geographical areas. One is Mexico City, the capital, and the other, the cities of the northern border.

Because the United States is a rich country, it has acted as a magnet for people from Mexico who are looking for better opportunities. The United States, as we have seen, has always had a demand for cheap labor, and since the 1920s Mexico has been the chief supplier of that labor. Drawn by the available jobs, many Mexicans who have not been able to enter the United States legally have chosen to come in illegally. They have been encouraged by the fact that many employers who want cheap labor are willing to employ wetbacks. It is curious that it is a felony to be a wetback, but at the present time it is not a violation of the law to employ wetbacks. This was due to Public Law 283 (cf Samora, 1971: pp.139-40).

Other Dimensions

Several dimensions of the illegal alien situation are worthy of discussion. As in the case of commuters, American workers have charged that illegals depress wages, displace the domestic labor sup-ply, and retard unionization and collective bargaining. From another viewpoint, humanitarian reformers complain that illegal aliens are defenseless and outside of the law, making them subject to exploitation by some unscrupulous employers.

Most illegal aliens come to this country on their own; in recent years there has been a growing traffic in smuggling. Aliens might contract with a smuggler for a fee of from one hundred to three hundred dollars for transportation as far north as Chicago, well beyond the primary and secondary lines of defense set up by the Border Patrol. The detection and apprehension of smugglers has increased greatly since 1965. But until 1971, the penalties imposed upon captured smugglers were not great enough to deter the smuggling operation. Only after a number of aliens were found dead as a result of the smuggling operation did the Justice Department begin to clamp down a bit more on the fines and jail sentences imposed on smugglers. At the present time, however, smuggling of people into the United States is still on the increase. In 1965, 525 smugglers (who smuggled 1,814 aliens) were apprehended, in contrast to 8,074 smugglers (who smuggled 83,114 aliens) apprehended in 1974.

The smuggling of marijuana and heroin by illegal aliens does not seem to present as large a problem as many people claim. Most illegal aliens are poor people more interested in obtaining a job than in entering into the drug traffic.

Still another dimension of the illegal alien situation concerns those persons who have been issued what is called a "visitor's permit" in order to enter the United States. These permits, sometimes called a border crossing card, are issued to persons who wish to come briefly to the United States for business, shopping, or pleasure. Holders of these cards are supposed to return to the country of origin within seventy-two hours, and following a recent adjustment of the law, must not go beyond twenty-five miles of the border unless they have special permission.

What happens in reality, however, is that many persons who have such a permit enter the United States, stay beyond the time allowed, take a job (which is strictly prohibited), and thus violate the law. For example, many women with visitors' cards enter the United States early in the morning, work as a maid for an American housewife during the day, and return to Mexico late in the afternoon, having earned two dollars for the day. This is a direct violation of the issuance of the visitor's permit. Other people enter the United States and simply disappear. When they are apprehended several days, weeks, or months later, they can claim they entered without inspection. Thus they become "wetbacks" and are expelled from the country-but they can use their cards to return again. It is impossible to determine how many persons with only a visitor's permit are working in the United States, but it is safe to say that they do augment the pool of cheap labor available.

Some use still another technique in order to gain entrance to the country. Since it usually costs two or three hundred dollars to be smuggled into the northern part of the United States, a person who can raise that amount of money can, in fact, get a tourist card and buy a round-trip airline ticket from Mexico City to Chicago. Upon arrival, he travels to any northern city where he has friends or relatives, who, in fact, may already have found a job for him. The individual then cashes the return-trip portion of the airline ticket, which provides him with money to live on until he receives his first paycheck. Row many persons use this method to gain entrance into the United States is, of course, unknown.

Migrant Farm Workers

Many of the Mexicans who enter the United States, legally or illegally, find jobs in seasonal agricultural work. They join an existing farm labor force which is largely Mexican American, but consists alsoof a few poor whites and blacks from the South, some American Indians from the Southwest, Puerto Ricans, and Filipino immigrants. All these groups follow the crops, moving north as the season advances.

The largest number of migrant Mexican Americans use the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas as their home base. Others, but not as many, come from California, New Mexico, Colorado, or Arizona. Those who come from Texas, not far from the border region, have been displaced from work in their home communities by the commuters and by the illegal aliens. These Texas migrants are people who have worked in the agricultural fields for very low wages, who are probably the poorest of the poor, the least educated, the least skilled for other types of jobs, and the ones who earn the least money.

The migrants move up from the South or the Southwest early in April to make their rounds in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, or northern California, Washington, Oregon, and various other places. They work through the summer planting, hoeing, thinning, and harvesting crops and toward fall return home to harvest there in late season. They come as families or as crews in a truck. They may make a large amount of money on the particular day that they work, especially if the whole family is working, but they work comparatively few days of the year. The housing they are given is generally deplorable, the health and the sanitary conditions under which they live and travel are bad, and they seem to be caught in a never-ending cycle of poverty.

In increasing numbers these seasonal farm workers are "dropping off" the migrant stream and beginning to settle down in several areas in the Midwest and the Great Lakes states. As soon as they are able to find work-whether as a dishwasher, a waitress, a janitor, or whatever-they tend to stop the migrant work in favor of the steady job. The steady job means a number of things to them, even if it does not pay high wages. It means that they can settle down and live in one place the year around. It means that the children can go to school for a full year, not just from November to April. Above all, it means that they can stabilize their lives and have access to more opportunities.

In summary, we have suggested that Mexicans, both legal and illegal immigrants as well as Mexican Americans, have in recent years become the main source of cheap labor in the United States. Various factors have contributed to this situation, including the loss of land of the early settlers, the immigration laws, the Great Depression, the boom years of World War II, the Bracero program, the commuters, wetbacks, and seasonal farm workers. All in all, these are the people who have provided the labor for the agricultural and industrial development of the Southwest. These people have also provided the labor for the railroads and the mines and for the harvesting of crops which provide the food for our daily consumption.

REFERENCES

Craig, Richard B. The Bracero Program. Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1971.

Hancock, Richard H. The Role of the Bracero in the Economic and Cultural Dynamics of Mexico:
A Case Study of Chihuahua. Stanford: Hispanic American Society, 1959.

Samora, Julian. Los Mojados: The Wetback Story. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1971