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Vendaval -> RE: Dwight Eisenhower's "Operation Wetback" (5/24/2007 3:34:16 PM)
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General reply to the topic at hand -
Folks, one of the main problems with the U.S. immigration policy with Mexico is that the rules have changed depending on surpluses or shortages of labor.
See the article quoted below in Wikipedia for an overview. There is also an entire series of articles on the U.S. Immigration Debate, see the box on the right side of the screen when you click on the link.
" History"
" The Bracero Program was originally a binational temporary contract labor program initiated, in August 1942, by an exchange of diplomatic notes between the United States and Mexico after a series of negotiations. Bracero is Spanish for "Highly Skilled Laborer". The program was designed initially to bring a few hundred experienced Mexican agricultural laborers to harvest sugar beets in the Stockton, California area but soon spread to cover most of the United States to provide much needed farm workers to agriculture labor market. As an important corollary, the railroad bracero program was independently negotiated to supply U.S. railroads initially with unskilled workers for track maintenance but eventually to cover other unskilled and skilled labor. By 1945, the quota for the agricultural program was more than 50,000 braceros to be employed in U.S. agriculture at any one time, and for the railroad program 75,000.
The railroad program ended promptly with the conclusion of World War II, in 1945, but the agricultural program under various forms survived until 1964, when the two governments ended it as a response to harsh criticisms and reports of human rights abuses. The program made a large contribution to U.S. agriculture, leading to the advent of mechanized farming. However the program, for the most part from a humanitarian standpoint, was deemed a complete and utter failure.[citation needed]
The workers who participated in the Bracero Program have generated significant local and international struggles challenging the US government and Mexican government to identify and return deductions taken from their pay, from 1942 to 1948, for savings accounts which they were legally guaranteed to receive upon their return to Mexico at the conclusion of their contracts. Many, if not most, never received their savings. However, lawsuits presented in federal courts in California, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, highlighted the substandard conditions and documented the ultimate destiny of the savings accounts deductions, but the suit was thrown out because the Mexican banks in question never operated in the United States. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_Program
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