By: Francisco Jimenez

 Imagine that your family has to move several times during a year, and each move takes you to a different city and a different school. How would the moves affect you, your education, your friendships?

In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, more than 500,000 Mexicans were deported or pressured to leave, during the Mexican Revival. There were fewer Mexican workers 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 began 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 agricultural labor market. As a result, the railroad bracero program was independently negotiated to supply U.S. railroads initially with unskilled workers for railroad 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 At the demand of U.S. growers, who claimed ongoing labor shortages, the program was extended under a number of acts of congress until 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 that embodied formalized protections for Mexican laborers. The program was renewed every two years until 1963 when, under growing objections by American labor interests, it was extended for a single year with the understanding it would not be renewed. After the formal end of the agricultural program in 1964, there were agreements covering a much smaller number of contracts until 1967, after which no more braceros were granted. The program was voted out of existence by Congress in 1964, under mounting criticism for exploiting Mexican workers and depriving American workers of jobs.