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Guest workers, braceros and wetbacks

A company that sells young Latin Americans on the idea of coming to the U.S. to work for up to four months, ostensibly as a cultural enrichment opportunity, is…

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Are we saying "give us your strong backs and arms, then go home already?"


Left, Braceros from the U.S. guest worker program that ran from 1942 to 1964. Right, the accomodations provided to young Latin Americans who paid thousands of dollars to come work in the U.S. as part of a cultural exchange.

Temporary workers are big news. 

A company that sells young Latin Americans on the idea of coming to the U.S. to work for up to four months, ostensibly as a cultural enrichment opportunity, is at the center of a controversy in Pennsylvania. The young Latinos paid $3,000 to $4,000 dollars each to receive a J-1 visa and be placed at a job and afforded housing which was deducted from their wages. 

But the reality, as they tell it, is that they were expected to work hours unlike those they had contracted for, and were housed all together in an unfinished basement, with blanket partitions between their bunk beds. In a move reminiscent of pre-union coal mining and other industries that deducted housing and food expenses from wages, one of the workers ended up owing more than he had made working for a McDonald's franchisee who has since been stripped of the franchise. (Read the story here in Spanish) 

Nationally, on March 29 the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO hammered out an agreement on the number of W-visas that will be available for low-skilled, temporary year-round workers as part of the immigration reform package currently being drafted by Senators.  At the same time, Rep. Don Young was getting himself into hot water by recollecting how his family farm had relied on the labor of "wetbacks" in the mid 20th century. Amid the hubbub that his use of the derogatory term stirred up, the verbal misstep was a good reminder of our not-so-glorious history of guest worker programs.

We have a long-standing tradition of importing workers — mostly from Mexico — who we essentially turn into a people apart. They work for us but are kept separate from us until their turn is up, or we no longer need them. 

The long-lived bracero program (1942-1964) is the perfect example of this. In Pennsylvania, during the war years, Mexican workers were brought to work on the Pennsylvania Railroad. They were housed together, and there was no interaction with anyone not associated with their work. At the end of the war it was "so long, it was good to (not) know you." Although a number of braceros nationwide were granted citizenship, the program has also been held up as representative of our willingness to benefit from the work ethic of our neighbors to the South while witholding the benefits and protections of full membership in our nation.

Although the proposed temporary worker agreement allows laborers to apply for permanent residence after a year of work in the United States, it is unclear whether it will make a path to citizenship anything but nominal. In both cases, it is important that the applications for permanent residency and/or citizenship not be mired in the decades-long waiting period that is the current state of affairs, particularly for Mexican immigrants. Given that temporary workers are more likely to leave family behind, and given the recent de-prioritizing of family-unification visas, this must be addressed.

There is another reason to make sure that as we enact immigration reform we offer temporary workers a real opportunity to become Americans, if they want to be. And, strangely, it is Rep. Young's slip of tongue that makes that evident to us. Perhaps the "wetbacks" Young was referring to were temporary agricultural workers, or perhaps they were here without a visa, like many of the 1,075,168 Mexicans (and Mexican-American citizens) deported by "Operation Wetback" in 1954  — we'll never know. Because they were never any more than strong arms and strong backs to us, here only to pick our produce.

It is an ugly reflection of who we, as a nation, have been. Let's not let it reflect who we are now. 

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