16 Facts About Bracero program

In Texas, the Bracero program was banned for several years during the mid-1940s due to the discrimination and maltreatment of Mexicans including the various lynchings along the border.

The program lasted 22 years and offered employment contracts to 5 million braceros in 24 U S states—becoming the largest foreign worker program in U S history.

In 1942 when the Bracero Program came to be, it was not only agriculture work that was contracted, but railroad work.

The railroad version of the Bracero Program carried many similarities to agricultural braceros.

Local Mexican government was well aware that whether male business owners went into the Bracero program came down to the character of their wives; whether they would be willing to take on the family business on their own in place of their husbands or not.

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Bracero program men searched for ways to send for their families and saved their earnings for when their families were able to join them.

Permanent settlement of bracero families was feared by the US, as the program was originally designed as a temporary work force which would be sent back to Mexico eventually.

The illegal workers who came over to the states at the initial start of the program were not the only ones affected by this operation, there were massive groups of workers who felt the need to extend their stay in the U S well after their labor contracts were terminated.

In 1955, the AFL and CIO spokesman testified before a Congressional committee against the Bracero program, citing lack of enforcement of pay standards by the Labor Department.

Workers who participated in the bracero program have generated significant local and international struggles challenging the U S government and Mexican government to identify and return 10 percent mandatory deductions taken from their pay, from 1942 to 1948, for savings accounts that they were legally guaranteed to receive upon their return to Mexico at the conclusion of their contracts.

Bracero program railroaders were usually paid by the hour, whereas agricultural braceros sometime were paid by the piece of produce which was packaged.

Bracero program contracts indicated that they were to earn nothing less than minimum wage.

The notable strikes throughout the Northwest proved that employers would rather negotiate with braceros than to deport them, employers had little time to waste as their crops needed to be harvested and the difficulty and expense associated with the bracero program forced them to negotiate with braceros for fair wages and better living conditions.

The political opposition even used the exodus of braceros as evidence of the failure of government policies, especially the agrarian reform program implemented by the post-revolutionary government in the 1930s.

The bracero program looked different from the perspective of the participants rather than from the perspective of its many critics in the US and Mexico.

The end of the Bracero program did not raise wages or employment for American-born farm workers.