Essay On The Bracero Program

In 1942 Mexico signed a binational treaty the Bracero Program with the United States that allowed for large numbers of Mexican nationals to work in the United States on a temporary basis. The Bracero Program was considered a win-win proposition for both governments, as it fulfilled the labor needs of powerful agricultural growers in the United States and relieved the pressure of Mexico’s large wage-seeking population. As millions of Mexican workers became accustomed to employment practices, lifestyles, and consumption patterns in the United States, they established networks between jobs in the U.S. and friends and family members back home that allowed migratory flows to become self-sustaining in the decades to follow (Munoz, 2011). “Mexican workers have been invited in and forced out depending upon American economic desires and sociopolitical fears” (Salcido, 2004). “The Bracero Program, for example, reconfigured the Southwest borderlands when, in 1942, border controls were eased for Mexican men to offset wartime shortages” (Salcido, 2004). In 1954 the United States launched a high profile campaign, called “Operation Wetback,” that subjected ethnic Mexicans citizens and immigrants alike to heightened anti-Mexican sentiment and deportation. The U.S. government was condoning the use of Mexican labor “while simultaneously whipping up anti-immigration hysteria against wetbacks” (Munoz, 2011). Operation Wetback was one of the tactics used by the U.S. government to create pressure on the Mexican government to extend the Bracero Program while also giving appearance to the American public that the border was “under control” (Munoz, 2011).

Since the 1990s, the strategy of the Border Patrol has been termed “prevention by deterrence” and h...

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...r (Ellingwood, 2004). Even after more and more cases like this one contienued to happen the U.S. government did not to try and reduce the number of migrants dying. Instead it intensified its border security consciously knowing what the outcome could be. Mexican Senate passed a resolution zeroing in on Gatekeeper and the American government: “The anti-immigration strategy implemented by the U.S. government to seal its border becomes more aggressive every day, raising the cost in human lives of those who attempt to obtain better living conditions,” the resolution stated (Ellingwood, 2004). It noted that “migrants must make their way through heavy vegetation, deep and rocky canyons, and high mountains that make the crossing difficult, slow, and dangerous. Add to this the lack of food and water and the bad climate… and the high number of deaths that the undocumented suf