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Bracero card issued to Jess Campoya in 1951 in El Paso, Texas. The Bracero ProgramThe 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.

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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.

Operation Wetback2The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 offered amnesty to Hispanics living illegally in the U.S. before 1982.

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.http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=research_research9605

SOURCE:3

The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 granted amnesty to many illegal immigrants, resulting in the large increase after 19874

FOREIGN-BORN PEOPLE: In 2004, the U.S. population was about 293 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. By the Migration Policy Institutes 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 peopleabout 12.8 percent of the total populationwas 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.

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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)6

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.

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8The new wave may seem larger to many people now because immigrants are increasingly moving to small towns and suburbs.

9Most 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.

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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.11Projected Proportion of Population by Race/Ethnicity in Texas, 2000-2040*

Demographers predicted that by the early twenty-first century, Anglos would comprise less than half of the Texas population.

http://txsdc.utsa.edu/presentations/12

Demographers predicted that by the early twenty-first century, Anglos would comprise less than half of the Texas population. 13

14Projected Proportion of Population by Race/Ethnicity in Texas, 2000-2040*

Demographers predicted that by the early twenty-first century, Anglos would comprise less than half of the Texas population.

http://txsdc.utsa.edu/presentations/15

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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.

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Mexico is the seventh largest importer in the world(Total imports in billion dollars, 2002) 19

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.

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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/

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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.

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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.30

Many of the poorest barrios in Cd. Jurez are shrouded in pollution. Their residents generally work at one of the maquiladoras, making at most the equivalent of around $5 a week.

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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)

Gerardo Rivas

The Changing Face of Illegal ImmigrationThe federal government estimated that 700,000 illegal immigrants were living in Texas as of October 1996, a number surpassed only by Californias 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.)32

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In the 1930s, countless thousands of honest, hard-working people lost their homes and farms to the foreclosures 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.

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Oklahoma Sharecropper Stalled on California Highway (1937)

In the late 1930s, signs on Route 66 outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma proclaimed: NO JOBS in CaliforniaIF YOU are looking for work-KEEP OUT6 Men for Every JobNo State Relief Available for Non-Residents

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La Pisca (cotton picking.)36

El Desaje (hoeing)

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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 Len, A People with Many Histories: Mexican Americans in Texas in The Texas Heritage, 4th ed., 216.)38

Source: cnn.com39

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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)

Gerardo Rivas

The Changing Face of Illegal Immigration

Illegal Immigration41

Fear found at http://www.alpinesurvival.com/

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43Ten Issues More Pressing than Illegal Immigration into the United States

Al QaedaProliferation of nuclear weaponsStabilizing Iraq so we can leaveU.S. debt and budget deficitAquifers (ground water)Clean, cheap and abundant energyPollution (Global warming)World hunger High incarceration rate & crimeEconomic competitivenessEducationInfrastructureInnovation

Jobs

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