Bracero Program

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. 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.

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.

The redevelopment of a similar program has recently been spotlighted in the political media when United States president George W. Bush presented the possibility of creating such a program in conjunction with Mexican President Vicente Fox to fulfill immigration needs. Such a program would allow laborers to apply for a visa, be screened and then come to the United States to work.

It is expected such a program would apply to various industries and not solely agriculture. This program was widely expected to begin operation in 2000 or 2001, but was put aside in US foreign policy after the September 11th attacks. However, the possibility of such a program being enacted was revived by President Bush, in late 2004, when he began referring to the possibility of it being opened once more, after his re-election in 2004.

Protest singer Phil Ochs's song, "Bracero", centers on the exploitation of the Mexican workers in the program.