The Bracero Program: Migrant Workers in America Documentary Part 1 (1959)

1959 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000KK2T68?ie=UTF8&tag=doc06-20&link... Watch the full film: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-braceros-1959.html

The Bracero Program (from the Spanish word brazo, meaning "arm") was a series of laws and diplomatic agreements, initiated by an August 1942 exchange of diplomatic notes between the United States and Mexico, for the importation of temporary contract laborers from Mexico to the United States. U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Mexican president Manuel Ávila Camacho, in Monterrey to discuss Mexico as part of the Allies in World War II and the Bracero Program. After the expiration of the initial agreement in 1947, the program was continued in agriculture under a variety of laws and administrative agreements until its formal end in 1964.

In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, over 500,000 Mexican Americans were deported or pressured to leave, during the Mexican Repatriation. There were thus fewer Mexican Americans available when labor demand returned with World War II.

The Bracero Program was initially prompted by a demand for manual labor during World War II, and begun with the U.S. government bringing in a few hundred experienced Mexican agricultural laborers to harvest sugar beets in the Stockton, California area. The program soon spread to cover most of the United States and provided workers for the agriculture labor market (with the notable exception was Texas, who initially opted out of the program in preference of an "open border" policy, and were denied braceros by the Mexican government until 1947 due to perceived mistreatment of Mexican laborers). 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 75,000 braceros working in the U.S. railroad system and 50,000 braceros working in U.S. agriculture at any one time.

The railroad program ended with the conclusion of World War II, in 1945.

At the behest of U.S. growers, who claimed ongoing labor shortages, the program was extended under a number of acts of congress until 1948. Between 1948 and 1951, the importation of Mexican agricultural laborers continued under negotiated administrative agreements between growers and the Mexican Government. On July 13, 1951, President Truman signed Public Law 78, a two-year program which embodied formalized protections for Mexican laborers. The program was renewed every two years until 1963, when, under heavy criticism, it was extended for a single year with the understanding it would not be renewed. After the formal end of the agricultural program lasted until 1964, there were agreements covering a much smaller number of contracts until 1967, after which no more braceros were granted.

The program in agriculture was justified in the U.S. largely as an alternative to undocumented immigration, and seen as a complement to efforts to deport undocumented immigrants such as Operation "Wetback", under which 1,075,168 Mexicans were deported in 1954. Scholars who have closely studied Mexican migration in this period have questioned this interpretation, emphasizing instead the complementary nature of legal and illegal migration. Scholars of this school suggest that the decision to hire Mexicans through the Bracero Program or via extra-legal contractors depended mostly on which seemed more suitable to needs of agribusiness employers, attributing the expansion of the Bracero Program in the late 50s to the relaxation of enforcement of regulations on Bracero wages, housing, and food charges.

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 10 percent mandatory 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 field working braceros never received their savings, however most railroad working braceros did. 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. Today, it is stipulated that ex-braceros can receive up to $3,500.00 as compensation for the 10% only by supplying check stubs or contracts proving they were part of the program during 1942 to 1948. It is estimated that, with interest accumulated, $500,000,000.00 (five hundred million) is owed to ex-braceros, who continue to fight to receive the money owed to them.

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[barajasabel]

their isno other workers out their ho ca feed us we work all jobs that are harder notonly on the fields but also on te beef ndustry we are responsible to feed all america & we dont get any credit so fuck the sistem!!!

[peopleofthecircle]

@LALOPEZO without mexicanos, food prices would off the hook!

[peopleofthecircle]

A proper guest worker program, with robust woker protections,

would easily solve the labor/illegal problems.

But GOP would oppose it.

[LALOPEZO]

Whit out mexican USA is wanna be a pice a shit

[JesseStrongFingers]

Read a book, the United States began the flow of immigration for labor. You can't cut off immigration flows after families and networks are established.

[RayWilliamJohansen]

@javiquike

would these people be deported to ?

[javiquike]

I would say: deport all criminals and useless people who are sucking our taxes no matter if they are citizens or not. OK!!!!

[Fuzzypanda110]

ALAAAHHH

[davidhaythornthwaite]

i love watching the old ways of life, ty so much for the upload xx