{"id":330117,"date":"2025-12-04T14:32:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T14:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/330117\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T14:32:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T14:32:10","slug":"immigrant-workers-didnt-invade-the-u-s-they-were-recruited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/330117\/","title":{"rendered":"Immigrant Workers Didn’t Invade the U.S. They Were Recruited"},"content":{"rendered":"

A harrowing new normal has emerged in U.S. immigration enforcement. The chase-down of immigrants, traditionally a tactic employed by the Border Patrol in remote borderlands areas, is now a blunt national strategy deployed by the federal government in America\u2019s most populous cities. ICE agents conducting surprise raids<\/a> and brutal arrests <\/a>have rapidly become the symbol of an immigrant purge.<\/p>\n

Critics have called for ICE agents and other federal officers to drop their masks<\/a> so they might be known and accountable to the public. But Trump\u2019s hot pursuit of immigrants in American cities requires an unmasking not only of ICE operatives, but of the flimsiness of his narrative. Contrary to Trump Administration messages, there is no \u201cinvasion<\/a>\u201d necessitating the widespread suspension of basic civil liberties.<\/p>\n

During Trump\u2019s clampdown, Mexican communities in Chicago<\/a> and Los Angeles<\/a> have emerged as notable targets. But Mexican migration, far from being an invasion, proceeds from an invitation eagerly extended by the United States to Mexican migrants to address its farm labor shortage during and after World War II.<\/p>\n

The U.S. federal government insisted on access to Mexican migrants, even when Mexico began to seriously question whether the exodus was desirable and piloted measures to impede it. Long before ICE persecuted migrants on the streets of America\u2019s most iconic cities, the United States openly pursued them as its laborers of choice.<\/p>\n

For more than two decades after WWII, the United States beckoned Mexicans to move north to work in American agriculture. To facilitate this migration, the United States formally enlisted the cooperation of the Mexican government, which was to recruit Mexican men and transport them north, proceeding from the understanding that migrants were to be guaranteed certain baseline wages, housing, and food provisions. The treaties outlining this cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico came to be known as the Bracero Program. All told, it brought over four million Mexicans to the United States between 1942 and 1964.<\/p>\n

Read More: America’s Border Wall Is Bipartisan<\/a><\/p>\n

Farmers argued such a program was necessary\u2014at first because World War II shrank the domestic labor pool, as 16 million American men were deployed to fight Nazi Germany and Japan. But once the war ended, farmers emphasized a different rationale to keep the program going: farm labor jobs were so demanding\u2014the hours, the climate, the constant stooping\u2014that white Americans would never fill them. Their economic destiny, amid the U.S. post-war boom, was to join the expanding middle class, ensconced in proliferating suburban developments. Mexicans, on the other hand, were framed as being especially suited to arduous toil.<\/p>\n

In reality, growers were attracted to the cost structure of institutionalized Mexican migration. Mexico took care of conveying migrants to the border, sparing growers expenditures on labor recruitment and transportation. Growers were also seduced by the disciplining power they gained. Migrants who engaged in labor organizing could be summarily deported back to Mexico, meaning growers could exploit migrants with less fear it might lead to labor unionism. Millions of migrants subjected themselves to this system to experience life in the United States and earn their livelihood in dollars.<\/p>\n

Just as the United States has toggled back and forth between accepting immigrants and rejecting them, the Mexican government has also flip-flopped between enabling out-migration and restricting it. Mexico was initially on board with conveying migrants to the United States, expecting certain payoffs, including the prestige of contributing to the Allied war effort in WWII.<\/p>\n

But by the mid-1950s, Mexican leaders could see the experiment had backfired. Far from elevating Mexico\u2019s image, migrant workers evoked lamentable headlines in both the United States and Mexico. They were routinely mistreated by employers who flouted wage, food, and housing guarantees. \u201cLike Animals,\u201d announced one Mexican newspaper, describing how Mexican migrants were treated. In Mexico, the misery of migration was crystallized in popular movies such as Espaldas Mojadas and songs such as \u201cEl Canto del Bracero,\u201d which underscored the social marginalization and labor exploitation faced by Mexicans abroad.<\/p>\n

Bothered by such press, Mexico refused to renew the Bracero Program in 1954. It demanded significant concessions from the United States to resume diplomatic conversations\u2014chiefly, the authority to block abusive farmers from receiving workers without waiting for lengthy investigations and U.S. approval. Under President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, Mexico began to experiment with policies to employ Mexicans internally instead. Mexican officials circulated policy proposals, penned editorials, and delivered remarks extolling possible paths to prosperity without emigration, including the formation of state-supported agrarian settlements for migrants and their families within Mexico. President Ruiz Cortines, in a moment of chest-thumping nationalism, proclaimed his government\u2019s newfound rallying cry: \u201cthe braceros of Mexico for the fields of Mexico.\u201d <\/p>\n

The United States and growers, especially those in Southern California, grew concerned. Mexico not only refused to renew the Bracero Program and sanction out-migration\u2014it actively policed the exit of Mexicans at border checkpoints, barring Mexicans from leaving and guarding them with military personnel. While Mexico completed its about-face on migration, California\u2019s lettuce crop rotted due to a lack of farmhands.<\/p>\n

In desperation, the U.S. Department of Labor decided to jettison Mexico\u2019s involvement in migration altogether. It initiated a program of \u201cunilateral hiring\u201d to bring Mexicans to the United States. and save the lettuce crop. The DOL called on Mexican migrants to make their way to the border and into the United States, promising that jobs awaited them. Mexican officials decried this as an \u201copen border\u201d policy that invited migrants to trample over Mexico\u2019s dictates.<\/p>\n

Thousands arrived at border crossings, especially the Mexicali\u2013Calexico crossing leading to Southern California. They overwhelmed Mexican forces stationed there. Mexican federal envoys pleaded with migrants to return home, promising eventual resettlement within Mexico, but failed to convince them. Instead, for days, migrants tussled with Mexican soldiers and auxiliary police officers, demanding to be let go, to enter the United States. Reports surfaced of soldiers beating migrants and even shooting at them. Mexico\u2019s willingness to explore counter-migratory politics soon dissipated.<\/p>\n

For Mexico, the embarrassment of mass out-migration was worsened by the humiliation of Mexican citizens openly rejecting its protectionism. The government adopted the position that if Mexicans wanted to leave, it was their prerogative. It assented to the U.S. proposal to move past the incident and simply renew the Bracero Program.<\/p>\n

Read More: Rural America\u2019s Revival Depends on Immigrants<\/a><\/p>\n

By strategically manipulating its border policy, the United States managed to keep unfettered access to the highly desirable Mexican labor pool. More importantly, it disciplined Mexico against seeking to foment fixity. The Mexican government would never again explore counter-migratory policies with similar verve, understanding that U.S. access to Mexican labor was off limits.<\/p>\n

Ever since, the United States has exerted great latitude in its manipulation of Mexican movement. Again in 1954, just months after it opened its borders to Mexican workers, it launched a campaign dubbed \u201cOperation Wetback\u201d to round up undocumented migrants. It was a farce, defined by overinflated numbers and sensationalized images of captured immigrants crammed into buses and trains. Its aim was to reassure Americans that the U.S. Border Patrol remained serious about controlling arriving immigrants. However, the United States\u2019 truest nature\u2014its reliance on foreign labor\u2014was revealed in its earlier siren call to Mexican migrants who answered it despite the opposition of the Mexican government.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Trump often speaks admiringly of Operation Wetback<\/a>. This selective remembering of 1954\u2014the emphasis on the U.S. as protector of its borders, rather than on its involvement in securing Mexican labor to begin with\u2014sidesteps a deeper truth. Migration control is illusory so long as employers who seek a foreign workforce\u2014whether as guest workers or undocumented laborers\u2014escape the scrutiny that migrants face daily.<\/p>\n

From the 1950s to today, U.S. immigration restriction has contented itself with sporadically intimidating migrants; all the while, employers, thanks to their lobbying power, have remained relatively untouchable.<\/p>\n

In Trump\u2019s view, poorer nations manipulatively dump their people into the United States. But, while the United States was able to bend Mexico to its will in the mid-20th century, the truth is more resilient. Mexican immigration flourished with the encouragement\u2014indeed, the insistence\u2014of the United States. To pretend otherwise is to feign shock at a harvest it intentionally planted and from which it has continually reaped rewards.<\/p>\n

Irvin Ibarguen is an assistant professor of history at New York University and the author of Caught in the Current: Mexico’s Struggle to Regulate Emigration, 1940-1980<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here<\/a>. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A harrowing new normal has emerged in U.S. immigration enforcement. The chase-down of immigrants, traditionally a tactic employed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,8063,39139,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-330117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-freelance","tag-made-by-history","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}