The United States has a turbulent relationship with immigrants coming from Mexico. Since the Mexican-American war and the annexation of the southwestern states the United States has had American citizens from Mexican origins, and Mexican immigrants crossing the border. The United States overlooked these groups of people until they became a prominent working force and a major influence in businesses and agriculture. Businesses accepted Mexican workers for their cheap labor, but politicians used them as scapegoats for the loss of jobs, and economic turmoil narrative to the public. There has been a contradictory stance on the work force coming from Mexico as they at best were ignored by the public and taken advantage of, or at worst, dealing with …show more content…
With the lack of a stable workforce during world war I the United States involved Mexico and transported thousands of laborers to replace those abroad, and the program lasted from 1917 to 1921 (Kang, 10/21/2017). The program was successful in the United States and for growers, but it left a bad taste in the mouth of Mexican officials. Mexican government became wary of future involvement with the United States in the Bracero program of World War II because of the treatment of workers during the first labor program as it states in the book Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Postwar United States and Mexico,” ... the memory of thousands of migrants returning after World War I with little to show for their work...” (Cohen,25). Additionally, as the book further explains the growers in the labor program were informal where the agricultural businesses set the wages, and conditions, without the state intervening (Cohen,27). These are issues that will further continue in the Bracero program, but with more discussion between the state of Mexico and the United States on how to handle the labor force. Once the war ended and the economic conditions changed through the great depression there was a shift in policy and opinion on the Mexican workforce. The Mexican laborers were tolerated when the United States needed the labor force, once economic …show more content…
This again, left a need in labor and the United looked for it in the usual places. The Bracero program was created like the agriculture labor program from the first World War as a crucial war necessity of labor. The Mexican government though were more apprehensive knowing the outcomes of the first world War program and the Mexican repatriation drives that forced their countrymen out. Mexico was more aggressive in the rights of their citizens, even barring sending braceros to Texas so they did not want them to face discrimination, and the book describes it as” This capitulation reflected a new fraternal relationship, not a paternalistic one, a relationship that Ávila Camacho could present to a skeptical domestic audience” (Cohen,28). Mexico’s reasoning was presented as being involved as an ally of the war effort in the agricultural front, instead of the trenches. Mexican President Avila Camacho stated they will fight in the furrows and factories not in the trenches as an important contribution (Cohen 25). The most disparaging difference between the Bracero program of world War II and agricultural labor program of World War I was the extraordinary size of undocumented immigration it came with, and that it lasted 22 years (Kang, 10/21/2017). The 22-year period of the Bracero program showed how favorable the United