Transcript The Bracero Program The term bracero (from the Spanish brazo, which translates as "arm") applies to the temporary agricultural and railroad workers brought into the United.

The Bracero Program
The term bracero (from the
Spanish brazo, which
translates as "arm") applies to
the temporary agricultural and
railroad workers brought into
the United States as an
emergency measure to meet
the labor shortage of World
War II. The Bracero Program,
also referred to as the
Mexican Farm Labor Supply
Program and the Mexican
Labor Agreement, was
sanctioned by Congress
through Public Law 45 of
1943.
Bracero card issued to Jesús Campoya in 1951 in
El Paso, Texas.
Operation
Wetback
In 1949 the Border Patrol seized nearly 280,000 illegal
immigrants. By 1953, the numbers had grown to more than
865,000, and the U.S. government felt pressured to do
something about the onslaught of immigration. What
resulted was Operation Wetback, devised in 1954 under
the supervision of new commissioner of the Immigration
and Nationalization Service, Gen. Joseph Swing.
Swing oversaw the Border patrol, and organized state and local officials along
with the police. The object of his intense border enforcement were "illegal
aliens," but common practice of Operation Wetback focused on Mexicans in
general. The police swarmed through Mexican American barrios throughout the
southeastern states. Some Mexicans, fearful of the potential violence of this
militarization, fled back south across the border. In 1954, the agents discovered
over 1 million illegal immigrants.
In some cases, illegal immigrants were deported along with their American-born
children, who were by law U.S. citizens. The agents used a wide brush in their
criteria for interrogating potential aliens. They adopted the practice of stopping
"Mexican-looking" citizens on the street and asking for identification. This
practice incited and angered many U.S. citizens who were of Mexican American
descent. Opponents in both the United States and Mexico complained of
"police-state" methods, and Operation Wetback was abandoned.
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of
1986 offered amnesty to Hispanics living
illegally in the U.S. before 1982.
SOURCE:
http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServ
er?pagename=research_research96
05
The higher level of INS immigrant admissions from FY'89-'91
was due the inclusion of illegal immigrants who were given
legal status as a result of the Immigration Reform and Control
Act (IRCA) amnesty enacted in 1986.
The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 granted amnesty to many illegal
immigrants, resulting in the large increase after 1987
FOREIGN-BORN PEOPLE: In 2004, the U.S. population was about 293 million,
according to the U.S. Census Bureau. By the Migration Policy Institute’s
estimation, a total of 35.7 million foreign-born people were living here that
year, including some 11.4 million naturalized citizens. That means about one
in eight people—about 12.8 percent of the total population—was from
somewhere else. The undocumented were 29 percent of the immigrant
population, or 3.5 percent of the entire population.
Source: Jane Guskin and David L. Wilson, The Politics of Immigration:
Questions and Answers (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 2007),
18-19.
Is the new wave of immigrants really new? At 12.8 percent, the proportion of immigrants in the
population was about the same as it has been for most of U.S. history. Foreign-born people made up
9.7 percent of the population in 1850 and rose to 14.7 percent in 1910. The rise in the immigrant
population from 1990 to 2000 was much less dramatic than the one from 1901 to 1910, when the
population was just ninety-two million and the number of immigrants had jumped to 8.8 million.
Source: Jane Guskin and David L. Wilson, The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 2007), 18
Percentage of Foreign-Born People in the U.S. (1880 to 2004)
The graph shows the 10-year moving average of the number of new immigrants
relative to the size of the population. The rate of immigration in the most recent
decade is about one-third the rate at the previous peak at the turn of the century.
The new wave may seem larger to many
people now because immigrants are
increasingly moving to small towns and
suburbs.
Most immigrants still settle in California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois,
mainly in urban areas where they tend to blend in with the general population.
Source: Jane Guskin and David L. Wilson, The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers
(New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 2007), 18-19.
The dominant characteristic of the
transition in the population of Texas at the
beginning of the twenty-first century is
the increase in the number of Hispanics.
Projected Proportion of Population by
Race/Ethnicity in Texas, 2000-2040*
Percent
70.0
59.2
60.0
53.2
53.1
50.0
46.5
45.1
39.3
40.0
37.3
32.0
30.3
30.0
23.9
20.0
11.6
11.1
10.3
9.2
10.0
4.5
3.3
7.3
5.9
8.0
8.9
0.0
2000
http://txsdc.utsa.edu/presentations/
2010
2020
Anglo
Black
Hispanic
2030
2040
Other
*Using U.S. Census count for 2000 and Texas State Data Center 1.0 population projection scenario for 2010-2040.
Demographers predicted that by the early twenty-first century,
Anglos would comprise less than half of the Texas population.
Demographers predicted that by
the early twenty-first century,
Anglos would comprise less than
half of the Texas population.
Projected Proportion of Population by
Race/Ethnicity in Texas, 2000-2040*
Percent
70.0
59.2
60.0
53.2
53.1
50.0
46.5
45.1
39.3
40.0
37.3
32.0
30.3
30.0
23.9
20.0
11.6
11.1
10.3
9.2
10.0
4.5
3.3
7.3
5.9
8.0
8.9
0.0
2000
http://txsdc.utsa.edu/presentations/
2010
2020
Anglo
Black
Hispanic
2030
2040
Other
*Using U.S. Census count for 2000 and Texas State Data Center 1.0 population projection scenario for 2010-2040.
Demographers predicted that by the early twenty-first century,
Anglos would comprise less than half of the Texas population.
NAFTA has clearly resulted in astronomical trade increases
between the U.S. and Mexico. Since 1993, the value of two-way
U.S. trade with Mexico almost tripled, reaching $232 billion in
2002, and continues to grow twice as fast as U.S. trade with the
rest of the world. As the numbers increase, so do the
opportunities for entrepreneurs.
Mexico is the seventh largest importer in the world
(Total imports in billion dollars, 2002)
Texas has increased its
exports to Canada and
Mexico by over $10 billion
since NAFTA started. The
Department of Commerce
claims that 19,000 jobs
are created for every $1
billion in added exports.
Using that formula, NAFTA
has created 190,000 jobs
in Texas. Other job
estimates claim higher
numbers. NorAm Energy
(Houston), J.C. Penney
(Dallas), Dave & Buster's
Inc. (Dallas), and American
Telesource International
Inc. (San Antonio) are
among those Texas
companies that have
benefited from NAFTA.
Hilda, a factory worker, stands with her children in front of a typical
tarpaper dwelling outside Ciudad Juarez near the U.S. border. Workers
do not give last names for fear of losing their jobs.
Source: www.anglicanjournal.com/127/05/
A woman draws water from a well in a squatter
community where she lives in Tijuana, Mexico. The
vast majority of the people in this community work
in assembly plants in a nearby industrial park and
lack basic services such as running water,
sewage, electricity and adequate roads.
Toxic waste, Tijuana. Outside a closed battery recycling
plant on Otay Mesa in Tijuana, Mexico, open pits of
toxic waste pit the landscape, and chemicals leaching
up from the ground form a crust on the ground. In the
barrio of Chilpancingo, below the mesa, 19 children
were born with no brains in 1993 and 1994, because of
pollution from this and other maquiladoras on top of the
mesa.
Many of the poorest barrios
in Cd. Juárez are shrouded
in pollution. Their residents
generally work at one of
the maquiladoras, making
at most the equivalent of
around $5 a week.
The federal government estimated that 700,000 illegal immigrants were living in Texas as
of October 1996, a number surpassed only by California’s 2 million. That same year, legal
permanent resident immigrants in Texas numbered 825,000. Since then, as policing
techniques have grown more effective in border cities, an increasing number of illegal
immigrants have resorted to crossing the river at isolated points, thereby undertaking a
perilous trek across hundreds of miles of desert; many have not survived the journey. (p.
424.)
The Changing Face of
Illegal Immigration
Gerardo Rivas
Gerardo Rivas sits with his Seven-year-old Olga Rivas, right, sits with her father Gerardo
Rivas, in white shirt after she and her family were caught crossing illegally into Arizona
from Sasabe, Mexico, Tuesday, April 25, 2006. Olga walked through the desert for fourteen
hours with her family before being caught by the U.S. Border Patrol. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
In the 1930s, countless thousands of
honest, hard-working people lost their
homes and farms to the foreclosure’s
hammer. The federal government responded
by paying farmers to leave their land fallow.
This policy helped to reduce the oversupply
of agricultural goods, but it also motivated
landowners to evict tenant farmers. Many
of these farmers then became migrant farm
laborers.
In the late 1930s, signs on Route 66 outside of
Tulsa, Oklahoma proclaimed:
NO JOBS in California
Oklahoma Sharecropper
Stalled on California Highway
(1937)
IF YOU are looking for work-KEEP OUT
6 Men for Every Job
No State Relief Available for NonResidents
La Pisca (cotton picking.)
El Desaje (hoeing)
Mexican-American farm life in the postwar
period meant twelve-to-fourteen-hour days
in the fields performing strenuous hand
labor such as el desaje (hoeing) or la pisca
(cotton picking.) (Arnold de León, “A People
with Many Histories: Mexican Americans in
Texas” in The Texas Heritage, 4th ed., 216.)
Source: cnn.com
Illegal Immigration
The Changing Face of
Illegal Immigration
Gerardo Rivas
Fear found at
http://www.alpinesurvival.com/
Ten Issues More Pressing than Illegal
Immigration into the United States
1. Al Qaeda
2. Proliferation of nuclear weapons
3. Stabilizing Iraq so we can leave
4. U.S. debt and budget deficit
5. Aquifers (ground water)
6. Clean, cheap and abundant energy
7. Pollution (Global warming)
8. World hunger
9. High incarceration rate & crime
10.Economic competitiveness
a. Education
b. Infrastructure
c. Innovation