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A few days before Thanksgiving, President-elect Donald Trump promised to slap 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico unless the country stopped the flow of immigrants and drugs across the southern border. Claudia Shein Bam, President of Mexico respond forcefully This followed what she called a “very kind” phone conversation between the two. Trump claimed that Sheinbam agreed to “close” the border, which she said was a misinterpretation, but she did. speak that “there is no potential tariff war”
Meanwhile, Reuters reports that American growers have asked Trump to reserve US agriculture from mass deportation It is feared that labor shortages will cause grocery prices to soar. Trump has not publicly responded.
Is there an agreement to make it? History may provide some insight into some of the options Trump faced and what they presented.
In the past several months Reporters have repeatedly asked me about Operation Wetback, Trump’s Eisenhower-era mass deportation of Mexican farm workers. Held To serve as a model for the plan to remove unauthorized immigrants from the country. The deportation of one million farm workers in 1954 was cruel and cruel. Many truck workers are abandoned across the border in the desert of northern Mexico. Some died of heat stroke. Others were transported across the Gulf of Mexico to Veracruz on a cargo ship that one West Virginia congressman called a “hell ship.”
Trump faces many options. Stephen Miller and Project 2025 have outlined one scenario: Collect unauthorized immigrants from 10 million to 12 million workplaces, farms, and communities, locking them up in camps. and banish them Although this is very expensive and difficult to transport. But at least some people are taking this opportunity seriously. warehouse Prices in private prison companies rose the day after the election. And Texas officials announced the state would provide them. land to build a concentration camp
A scaled-down version might involve flashy raids and the deportation of a million or more people. That would definitely be bad enough. And it will cause alarming fear throughout entire immigrant communities. There may be serious damage. It requires uprooting people from their homes and workplaces. and separated families from each other But it may look a lot like the wall Trump promised in 2016 he would build on the border and force Mexico to cover the cost. When taking office He created hundreds of miles. It can be called beautiful. and won And everyone forgot about it. (Of course, Mexico didn’t pay a dime.)
Recent exchanges between Trump and Sheinbaum and deals made by agricultural interests points to a different possibility. That we might return to the kind of agreement that prevailed in the 1950s, with all its problems.
Although Eisenhower began by deporting more than a million Mexicans from the border region in 1954, terror dropped to 240,000 the next year, then 72,000; and 44,000 years later This vaunted “military operation” was a one-time phenomenon. It is not a sustained drive for mass deportation. Unauthorized border crossings have decreased as the government opens up new options for growers to hire workers at the border. In other words It turns formerly “illegal” workers into “legal.” Immigration officials call this “immigration.” To “dry out” growers, they have enrolled them in Bracero, a Mexican agricultural guest program that has been in operation since the early 1940s.
Under a bilateral agreement between the United States and Mexico Recruitment for the Bracero program should take place at designated centers in different states in Mexico, making the program accessible throughout the country. By shifting employment to the border The government was able to solve the problem of illegal immigration handily. After 1954, the number of bail bonds increased. It increased by 25 percent in 1955 and remained stable at about 450,000 per year until the end of the decade.
New Guest-Worker Programs like the Bracero Program may be legal, but their legality can be deceptive.
The Bracero program began in 1943 as an emergency measure to alleviate labor shortages caused by the draft during World War II. After the war ended Growers are adamant the project will continue. They liked that it provided cheap labor under controlled conditions. Braceros worked on short-term contracts that required them to leave the United States when their contracts expired. This was intended to ensure that no family or community would be established in the United States. And of course, there will be no future citizens.
Bracero farm workers pick fruit in California Cotton in Arizona Sugarbeet in Colorado and vegetables in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. Employers often flout wage regulations. working hours and various conditions on a regular basis because enforcement of such rules is not sufficient. They housed workers in barracks and shabby huts. Giving substandard food and forbidding them from leaving the farm without means of passage. Although “legal,” braces are not safe from deportation either. Employers send those workers back to Mexico to speak out or organize to protect their rights. Immigration also arrests and deports guarantors who “skip” contracts.
Guest workers actually work under contractual servitude. Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery after the Civil War, also banned “involuntary servitude,” and the Foreign Affairs Act of 1885 prohibited the hiring of foreign workers under indenture. However, in 1951, Congress repealed the ban to accommodate Easement in Mexico’s Labor Program Public Law 78 provides that Mexican guest workers may not transfer or reduce the wages of domestic workers. and provide appropriate conditions and protection from abuse. However, in general, These protections are not worth the paper they are written on. Basically Braces do not have the right to resign. which is the highlight of using free labor
The Bracero project ended in the early 1960s, in part because harvesting of some crops became mechanized. The program also received public condemnation for its abuses and lack of freedom. Secretary of Labor under President John F. Kennedy, Willard Wirtz, began aggressively enforcing the protections in the contract. Growers abandoned the project. and ended in 1964
Although the Bracero project was the largest guest-led project in U.S. history, It had 4.6 million contracts from 1947 to 1964, but it was not the only project. And it wasn’t the last project. In the 1960s, the United States imported 15,000 workers from Jamaica to harvest sugarcane in Florida and pick fruit along the Atlantic coast. Congress created two new immigration categories for guest workers: H-2A in agriculture and H-1B in other industries. Makes the use of temporary overseas contract labor a permanent feature of the United States economic and immigration system.
In 2023, more than 1 million people in the United States will be on temporary work visas—310,000 in agriculture and 755,000 in other industries such as high technology, theme parks, resorts, and universities. Just like the Obligers who came before them. They are attached to their employer and cannot attack. Many are deported if they complain of wage theft or work-related injuries. Southern Poverty Law Center report that the H2 project is “riddled with labor and human rights violations… It harms the interests of U.S. workers as well, by undercutting the wages and working conditions of those working at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.”
Concierge workers have long been used around the world to meet labor needs. At the same time, it prevents unwanted ethnic populations from becoming permanent residents or citizens of the host country. This includes Turkish workers in Germany in the late 20th century and Bangladeshi and Filipino workers in the Gulf countries today. Here in the United States. “Legalizing” illegal immigrants by making them guest workers would be a dishonorable tradition. Americans shouldn’t be fooled if Trump declares this is a “beautiful” solution to illegal immigration.
The hidden lesson of Operation Wetback is that it is actually easy to turn unauthorized immigrants into legally authorized workers. But if we need immigrant workers We shouldn’t just allow them to come here legally. But it also allows them to participate freely in the labor market. And if they want You can settle down and become a citizen. That would actually legalize it.
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