A Long History
Itty bitty excerpts from a World Book article on the history of Mexican immigration:
By the late 1800's, most Mexican Americans had become tenants or workers on land that belonged to Anglo-Americans....During this period, the immigration of Mexicans to the United States was relatively small. Jobs on large cattle, sheep, cotton, and vegetable farms attracted some Mexicans to Texas....
The early 1900's saw a sharp increase in the number of Mexican immigrants as economic conditions in Mexico worsened. In 1910, the Mexican Revolution broke out. This conflict plummeted Mexico into years of political and economic chaos. The revolution also sparked a tremendous wave of immigration that continued until the 1930's.
Between 1910 and 1930, more than 680,000 Mexicans came to live in the United States. During the 1920's, Mexicans accounted for more than 10 per cent of all immigration to the United States. Most Mexicans fleeing the Mexican Revolution settled in the Southwest, where they took jobs in factories and mines or on railroads, farms, and ranches....
In 1924, the U.S. Bureau of Immigration established the Border Patrol to control illegal immigration across the Mexican-U.S. border. Strict enforcement of the 1917 adult literacy law led to a decline in Mexican immigration in the late 1920's. This decline continued through the Great Depression--the economic hard times of the 1930's--when only about 33,000 Mexicans entered the United States....
[In the 1930's] the U.S. and Mexican governments cosponsored a repatriation program that returned thousands of Mexican immigrants to Mexico....The program was intended to encourage people to return voluntarily to Mexico, but thousands were deported against their wishes. Many of these immigrants had lived in the United States for more than 10 years. Their American-born children were U.S. citizens. In some cases, adults who were deported were U.S. citizens who were mistakenly or intentionally forced to leave their country....
World War II had renewed the demand for immigrant labor. In 1942, the U.S. and Mexican governments developed the bracero program. Under the program, Mexican braceros (day laborers) could enter the United States legally for seasonal agricultural work and for work on U.S. railroads. Bracero programs were in effect from 1942 to 1947 and from 1951 to 1964....
Mexican immigration to the United States--both legal and illegal--climbed steeply during the 1950's. The U.S. government developed a program to curb illegal immigration. The program was highly publicized in order to encourage undocumented immigrants to leave voluntarily. It resulted in the deportation of a total of 3,800,000 undocumented immigrants. It did little, however, to control illegal immigration, which continued to increase from the 1960's through the 1980's.
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