The Immigration Act of 1917 restricted the flow of Mexican workers coming to the United States by adding a literacy requirement and a head tax of $8.00. These requirements could be waived in case of emergency.84
The First World War justified the emergency waiving of the literacy requirement and the $8.00 head tax. This allowed Mexican agricultural workers to fill jobs vacated by Americans who were fighting or who had gone north to work in well-paying industrial jobs. Rail and mine workers as well as other industrial workers were later admitted on similar emergency exemptions. From 1917 through 1921, 72,862 Mexicans took advantage of these exemptions to enter the United States. Given the cumbersome paperwork required to hire workers under these emergency measures, many growers preferred to hire workers who had entered the United States illegally. As a result, illegal entrants likely outnumbered legal ones during this period.85
During the First World War, migration to the United States, which was accepted and encouraged on both sides of the border, formed a positive element in U. S.—Mexican relations. Given the poor state of the Mexican economy, the lack of access to tillable land prior to 1934, and demographic pressure in north-central Mexico, jobs in the United States were extremely attractive. In 1918, the Mexican government even offered train fares to the border and provided personnel who facilitated job seeking in the United States. While the national government supported those seeking jobs in the United States, the state governors of Jalisco and Tamaulipas complained that their states were losing their labor force.86
After the First World War, given the poor economic situation in Mexico and the reluctance of Americans to perform unskilled, backbreaking jobs at the wages offered, the northward flow of Mexicans continued. From 1919 to 1921, 112,937 Mexican immigrants legally entered the United States. Except in New Mexico with its long-established Hispanic population, new arrivals soon outnumbered long-established Spanish or Mexican residents.87
As a result of the U. S. recession of 1921, the demand for labor declined throughout the southwest, and Mexican workers suddenly found themselves unwelcome. In 1921, roughly 100,000 Mexicans were either deported or voluntarily returned to Mexico. Many who returned “voluntarily” had little choice since once they lost their jobs, they found that public and private charities had limited resources and considered caring for U. S. citizens as their first priority.88
The Immigration Act of 1921 established quotas for European immigrants based on the number of persons of a given national origin who were reported in the 1910 U. S. census. As a result of this law, the number of legal immigrants entering the United States declined from 805,228 in 1921 to 309,556 in 1922. The rapid recovery of the U. S. economy from the 1921 recession, the reduction of European immigration, and the near stagnation of the Mexican economy resulted in soaring emigration from Mexico to the United States.89
Mexicans were not included in the country quotas established by the Immigration Act of 1924 since: 1) potential border-state employers lobbied for an exemption to quotas for residents of the western hemisphere in order to gain access to cheap labor; 2) the State Department felt quotas would damage Pan-American solidarity; 3) legislators felt Mexicans who came would only stay temporarily; and 4) the perceived problems resulting from massive European immigration occurred in eastern and mid-western cities, while Mexican immigrants were largely employed in southwestern agriculture, removed from the scrutiny of most congressmen.90
In 1924, the Border Patrol was established to enforce immigration laws. Prior to 1924, those who had successfully entered illegally faced little chance of deportation unless they were involved in a legal infraction. After that date, undocumented workers were driven into clandestinity. The number of Mexicans deported in the four years prior to the founding of the Border Patrol was 5,096, compared to 15,434 in the following four years. These numbers represent only a small fraction of those who entered illegally and found employment. Both U. S. officials and Mexican workers understood that it was the demand for labor in the southwest, not laws drawn up in Washington, that defined Mexican immigration to the United States.91
During the 1920s, given the cost of legal immigration and the reluctance of some U. S. officials to issue visas to Mexicans, an estimated five Mexicans entered the United States illegally for each one who entered legally. By making unauthorized entry illegal, without making it illegal to hire undocumented immigrants, the U. S. government shifted power even further in favor of U. S. employers to the detriment of Mexican workers. Strike leaders and labor organizers could be targeted for deportation. Growers could report Mexican workers to the Border Patrol if they pressed demands concerning wages or working conditions. Some growers would simply inform the Border Patrol where it could find their undocumented employees rather than paying them. This ambiguous status was used at the local level to lower wages. At the national level, it served as a valve. When the demand for labor rose, enforcement declined. When there was an oversupply of labor, enforcement increased.92
From the employers’ point of view, Mexican labor was ideal. Workers were young and healthy, and growers did not have to pay taxes for schools to educate their children. They would accept undesirable jobs, permitting the pay for those jobs to remain low. It was difficult for Mexicans to organize unions, especially if they were in the United States illegally. They could be sent home in times of recession, minimizing both the cost of unemployment payments and the political fall-out from a large number of unemployed.93
Between 1921 and 1930, 459,287 Mexicans, 11.2 percent of all legal U. S. immigrants, came from Mexico. The rate at which Mexicans entered the United States during the late 1920s would not be equaled again until the 1990s. The 1930 census reported 1,422,533 persons who were Mexican-born or of Mexican ancestry, compared to 700,541 in 1920. Texas had the highest concentration with 683,681, followed by California with 168,013. The cities with the most Mexican-born residents were Los Angeles with 97,116 and San Antonio with 82,373.94
In the 1920s, as Mexicans became an increasingly important part of the U. S. labor force, Americans began debating the desirability of relying on Mexican labor. Organized labor opposed the presence of Mexican workers, claiming they cost U. S. citizens jobs and lowered the wage level. Other groups characterized Mexicans as being “inferior,” just as earlier waves of German, Irish, East European, and Asian immigrants had been branded as inferior.95
New York Congressman La Guardia was very candid when asked why, if Mexicans caused problems, they were not excluded. He replied, “Because the influence of the sugar-beet growers and railroads is too strong.”96
Mexican government officials viewed workers coming to the United States as a safety valve to defuse rural tension. They also shared anthropologist Manuel Gamio’s view that working in the United States served to instill good work habits, as well as agricultural and industrial skills. Mexicans in the United States aided the Mexican economy by sending millions of dollars to their families in Mexico. Finally, the labor loss was rationalized as being only temporary. However, as the 1930 U. S. census indicated, many Mexicans did not return. Rather, they remained and brought their families from Mexico or started new ones in the United States.97
In 1930, most of the population that was Mexican by birth or ancestry had arrived recently. Only 18.6 percent were U. S.-born of U. S.-born parents. That year, 58.8 percent of the Mexican population lived in urban areas, indicating a move away from agricultural employment. Mexicans were slowly moving away from Colorado and the four U. S. states bordering Mexico. By 1930, about 15 percent were in the other forty-three states. Many took jobs in the midwest—harvesting sugar beets, laying railroad track, and in meat packing plants. More than 3,000 Mexicans worked in Ford auto plants, as Henry Ford deliberately created an ethnically divided labor force.98
When the Depression hit, Mexican workers in the United States again found themselves unwelcome. By January 1930, there were more than 6 million unemployed Americans. Not only did many of the jobs held by Mexicans vanish but the unattractive jobs they still held were being sought by Americans, desperate for work. Generally, Mexican workers were the first laid off. To add insult to injury, Mexicans found themselves blamed for U. S. joblessness.99
At the onset of the Depression, many Mexicans who were working in the United States not only lost their jobs but were denied relief funds unless they could prove legal residence in their community. Many communities used selective allocation of relief funds to reduce the number of Mexicans as well as poor whites and blacks from the U. S. South. Facing joblessness and hunger and with the Mexican government encouraging Mexicans to return, the tide of immigration reversed.
Between 1929 and 1931, many returning Mexicans arrived with their own cars or trucks piled high with their belongings. Others boarded special trains to the border at collection centers such as Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, Phoenix, Oklahoma City, and Los Angeles. Ships carried additional repatriates from New York and California.100
After 1931, it became obvious that the Depression was not just a temporary recession. This resulted in a more concerted effort to drive Mexican workers out of the United States. Secretary of Labor William Doak, who took office in 1930, spearheaded this effort, promising to provide jobs for Americans by deporting illegal aliens. The campaign to expel Mexicans drew widespread support in the United States.
Acting under Doak’s orders, agents began to raid private homes and workplaces in a search that extended from Los Angeles to New York. For the first time, immigration agents operated throughout the country, rather than just along the border. Some of the raids involved complex logistics and resembled full-scale paramilitary operations. Enforcement of immigration ceased to be an ordinary bureaucratic process and became sensationalized in the press. The Los Angeles Bar Association condemned these deportations as a wholesale violation basic human rights.101
Most Mexicans were not deported in the legal sense of the word. In addition to being denied relief benefits, they were told that if they did not leave voluntarily, they would be deported and thus ineligible to ever return to the United States.
Since many of the Mexicans being forced out had lived in the United States for years, their children had often been born in the United States, making them U. S. citizens. In some cases older, U. S.-born children elected to remain north of the border, thus splitting families.102
Many groups, including social welfare agencies, church charities, and the Red Cross, provided financial aid and basic necessities to the deportees. Some were also aided financially by Mexican consular officials and Mexican mutual aid societies.103
Special trains carried returnees from the border into interior Mexico without charge. Most of those deported returned to their place of origin. However, in some cases, the Mexican government established agrarian colonies and provided the returnees land to farm.104
By 1934, the massive expulsions were largely over. The grapevine spread the word in Mexico that there were no jobs in the United States and that Mexicans were unwelcome, so Mexicans largely stopped going. As the U. S. government assumed an increased share of relief efforts, there was less pressure at the local level to force out remaining Mexicans. Business groups led by the Bank of America and the Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles realized that deportations were reducing the demand for goods and services, so they lobbied for deportation to be restricted to those who voluntarily returned to Mexico. Finally, the government outlook changed with the New
Deal. Daniel MacCormack, FDR’s Immigration Service Commissioner, announced that authorities would have to obtain arrest warrants before detaining suspected aliens—not after, as had been the case. He also announced that there would be no more mass round-ups.105
By 1937, the often contradictory nature of Mexican employment in the United States was manifest. Some Mexicans were still returning to Mexico in desperation. Other Mexicans, just as desperate, were leaving Mexico to find work in the United States. Between 1931 and 1941, only 22,319 Mexicans legally entered the United States.106
The total number of Mexican returnees in the 1930s has been placed at between half a million and 1 million. These figures include some returnees who had intended to return to Mexico even before the onset of the Depression, as Mexicans had been doing for generations. Most returnees came from Texas and southern California. The effect of the Depression is clear from U. S. census data. While the 1930 census showed 639,107 Mexican-born people in the United States, the 1940 census found only 377,433.107
World History
