The Mexicans had a large impact on immigrant culture in the United States in the early 1900’s. The relationship between the United States and Mexico has been strained for a while and has degraded as time has progressed. This was mostly due to both the Bracero Program between 1942 and 1954 and Operation Wetback from 1954 to 1962. In the early 1900’s, immigration from Mexico to the United States started to be discouraged. Mexico realized that they would need the people leaving to help industrialize their country and its economy. At this time, their biggest asset was cheap and abundant labour. From the ‘20s on, Mexicans served as the primary labor source, especially in the southwest. Throughout the 1920’s, there were both legal and illegal immigrants
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The United States now offered more jobs and provided an incentive by the creation of a safer way to earn money to support families back home. Because of this program, people could come over if they had a work visa so even if they could not get into the program, they would come over illegally in order to find work. One could not get a visa unless they came over illegally first to find work and go through the application and hiring process. Many immigrants were not able to get jobs because literacy exams and fees were now included in the interviewing process. During this time, there was a huge food shortage in Mexico because very little food was able to be grown, and most of this food left the country as exports. This created more hunger and, with a growing population, this was not very beneficial. There was a lot of privatization and mechanization happening concerning Mexican agriculture as well, causing even more people to cross the border in search of better wages and a better life. This prompted the Immigration and Naturalization Service(INS) to increase raids and apprehensions. The Korean War and Red Scare were also impacting the decisions of the INS here as people had fear that communism and the workforce were taking over the world. This prompted tighter border security to help protect against communist infiltration. In 1945, they decided that the illegals needed to be deported further into Mexico to prevent …show more content…
The focus switched to quick processing and deportation. They had twelve temporary processing stations that were affiliated with the border patrol stations and began relocating, processing, and deporting illegals. There was some extreme mistreatment of these poor people. There were 750 officers and investigators, 300 jeeps, cars, and buses, and three airplanes. Their goals were to coordinate efforts more quickly and increase mobility as well as dissuade the more persistent immigrants from trying to return. To make this happen, illegal immigrants would be handed off to Mexican Officials and deported to Central Mexico where there were a lot of labor opportunities. In 1954, the first year of the program, there were 1,078,168 people deported; 170,000 from May to June alone, which was the first month of the operation. In the second year only 242,608 were apprehended. The majority of people were from border areas in Texas and California, but some other main locations included Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. Operation Wetback was thought to be considered immediately successful. There continued to be a large increase in border patrol on both sides; the number of border patrol agents doubled to 1,692 in 1962. Not only was everything terrible for these people, they were taken to unfamiliar places without any of their belongings and without a way to
The United States now offered more jobs and provided an incentive by the creation of a safer way to earn money to support families back home. Because of this program, people could come over if they had a work visa so even if they could not get into the program, they would come over illegally in order to find work. One could not get a visa unless they came over illegally first to find work and go through the application and hiring process. Many immigrants were not able to get jobs because literacy exams and fees were now included in the interviewing process. During this time, there was a huge food shortage in Mexico because very little food was able to be grown, and most of this food left the country as exports. This created more hunger and, with a growing population, this was not very beneficial. There was a lot of privatization and mechanization happening concerning Mexican agriculture as well, causing even more people to cross the border in search of better wages and a better life. This prompted the Immigration and Naturalization Service(INS) to increase raids and apprehensions. The Korean War and Red Scare were also impacting the decisions of the INS here as people had fear that communism and the workforce were taking over the world. This prompted tighter border security to help protect against communist infiltration. In 1945, they decided that the illegals needed to be deported further into Mexico to prevent …show more content…
The focus switched to quick processing and deportation. They had twelve temporary processing stations that were affiliated with the border patrol stations and began relocating, processing, and deporting illegals. There was some extreme mistreatment of these poor people. There were 750 officers and investigators, 300 jeeps, cars, and buses, and three airplanes. Their goals were to coordinate efforts more quickly and increase mobility as well as dissuade the more persistent immigrants from trying to return. To make this happen, illegal immigrants would be handed off to Mexican Officials and deported to Central Mexico where there were a lot of labor opportunities. In 1954, the first year of the program, there were 1,078,168 people deported; 170,000 from May to June alone, which was the first month of the operation. In the second year only 242,608 were apprehended. The majority of people were from border areas in Texas and California, but some other main locations included Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. Operation Wetback was thought to be considered immediately successful. There continued to be a large increase in border patrol on both sides; the number of border patrol agents doubled to 1,692 in 1962. Not only was everything terrible for these people, they were taken to unfamiliar places without any of their belongings and without a way to