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Abby Saturday. Everybody in a couple of weeks were going to be doing an episode on the delay, no great strike, which took place shortly after the end of the research programme in the United States. We covered the browser. Programme on the show back on August, third, twenty sixteen and rather than trying to go back over all of that same context in doing a great strike episode. We thought we would go ahead. It just put this classic back into people's feeds. They would also talks about a mass deportation effort that overlaps the research programme and that mass deportation effort was named after a racist slur. I wrote this episode back and when he thinks TAT, if I were riding it to day, I probably would have approached that differently. So we just wanted to know up front that there are multiple references to the programme, including its full name over the course of this epoch

welcome to stuff. You missed in history class, a production of I radio, hello and welcome to the podcast Ass Tracy V Wilson, and I'm only Frey for today I think a lot of people think concerns about immigration, our recent phenomenon, and we definitely going to state from where we live and can talk about firm experience, but I'm maybe and other nations to but definitely in the? U S right people, don't think of this ass, a thing that's been around, for a long time. Dear, I think, there's are you gonna veiling thought that you know their colonists came. That was the big immigration thing, and then there was this big gap and now we're all arguing and worried about it. Again, now thirty or forty

so in a hidden away in a way, it definitely is a new concern for people, because for about a hundred and fifty years after the nation was founded there weren't, really any immigration laws right. If you could get here, you got to live here. That was basically how Wait until you know that the ninety century so back in the late seventeen hundreds, the country didn't really seem to care about about immigration, but to look at another way, it is not a new concern at all, because the United States started passing immigration laws and a lot of them were targeted at emigrants from specific countries in the eighteen sixties. So Both are really new idea, given the whole history of the United States as a nation, really old one given. But it's been around for more than a hundred and fifty years so that whole division between like legal and illegal immigration is simultaneously

when old and today's as there are today story is part of that century. Long history, because for parts of the twentieth century, the United States and Mexico had agreements in place that were allowing and even encouraging mexican nationals to enter the United States to do agricultural work and other labour more sleep in the american Southwest and one specific programme called the breasts Arrow programme was launched during world war. Two to address a labour shortage as and men were needed for the war effort, but an unintended side effect of this programme that was about legally coming to the United States to work was this huge increase in the number of people who were crossing the border for Mexico illegally

These illegal entries reached a point that the government implemented another programme, which I want to make it clear. This is not an acceptable word to use today, but it is literally what the programme was named. It was called operation, wet back to deport mexican nationals and huge groups, so the intertwined stories of these two government programmes as what we are going to talk about today and before one thousand nine hundred and ten, there was simply not a lot of regulation of the United States border with Mexico. People pretty much crossed back and forth as they pleased and agricultural industry started to really grow in the southwest. These industries started to really rely on readily available and seasonal workforce that was coming in from Mexico in the nineteen twenties. This also became

true of other industries in the American West and South West as well, including railroads and mining. But today we're talking mostly about agriculture, so using mexican nationals as a source of labour basically came with some benefits. Agricultural work and a lot of places is highly seasonal and for the most part, migrant workers, who were U S? Citizens were traveling as families they would spend the year moving from place to place the family for the most part spending a lot more time. Looking for work than actually working, and when there was work, it was usually work that the whole family did, including the children in an effort to try to make enough money to last them for the rest of the year. So that's not an ideal situation in a lot of ways. Mexican workers, on the other hand, tended to be young men travelling in groups with other young men, a group of

men was overall a lot more efficient than a family with children and on the more exploit side of things, many were willing to accept lower wages than what was considered standard among Americans because of the limited proficiency with the english language. Mexican nationals were often unaware of laws or standard. That could protect them in their work and, as a result, there were a lot of growers and farmers in the American West and South West who are willing to over look the issue of whether a person had come into the United States legally or non in order to get cheap, easy to exploit labour. By the early nineteenth twenties, though, an increasing number of people were starting to think of this basically open border in the way it affected. The labour pool is a big problem. Large farms,

driving down their own costs by employing large numbers of mexican migrant workers that have really low rate of pay and small farms consider themselves to be at a big financial disadvantage. As a result, ABLE organization started, tacitly excluding mexican workers when they formed unions and all started using their political clout to lobby the government for more enforcement along the border and to put a stop to immigration from Mexico in nineteen twelve for the United States formally established the border patrol as part of the Labour Appropriation ACT as the Euro government started taking steps to secure the mexican border and curtail illegal immigration in the nineteen twenties.

Communities and states began taking steps to regulate their own mexican population as well as we discussed in our podcast amendments. Mendez verses, Westminster and Mario, Garcia, much of the South West and West approached its hispanic and latino population in much the same way, most of the rest of the nation did its black population through segregation, which was reinforced either through laws or through social customs. In places, large mexican and mexican american populations. Discrimination was widespread and socially accepted by much of the anglo community during the great depression which lasted roughly a decade, beginning in nineteen, twenty nine and the dust Bowl, which was a devastating period of drought and dust storms that struck much of the South West and great play stirring the same time. Why was pretty hard for pretty much everybody in the region, but it was especially hard for people of mexican descent

the anglo community, with increasingly hostile towards mexican migrants, viewing them as unnecessary competition for incredibly scarce jobs. The industries that had been real so heavily on mexican labour. For so long increasingly tried to exclude Mexicans from their workforce during the great depression prior to the great depression. The United States and Mexico had been working together to find ways to send mexican nationals who were in the? U s illegally back to Mexico during the great depression. Those efforts increased President Herbert Hoover ordered the Department of but to work out a deportation programme. The mexican government tried to identify its citizens, who were in the United States and in many cases paid for their return to Mexico, also do too Depression, Mexico was facing its own labour shortage, so part of the reason it paid to repatriate its citizens was to try to fill that labour shortage,

One thousand nine hundred and twenty nine and one thousand nine hundred and thirty five about eighty five thousand Mexicans voluntarily return to Mexico and another four hundred thousand were deported or repatriated, depending on how you want to look at it. Most of the ones who tried to return to the United States during the great depression were turned away at the border, which is this point, was a lot more secure that it had been earlier than the nineteen twenties. However, things shifted dramatically once again during world war to the draft applied to all. Residing in the United States, whether they were citizens or not. Roughly seven hundred and fifty thousand hispanic man saw some sort of active service in the war. With so many men serving in the war, the job market changed dramatically in the United States Many men who had held agricultural jobs went to serve in the war

other men and women moved out of agriculture and into higher paying manufacturing jobs that were either opened up as part of the war effort or because the people who had been doing those jobs join the armed forces. The were also disrupted trade with Europe, which cut off to the United States sources of many goods and meant that basically, Amerika had to make them ourself. The overall effect of all this on the labour pool for agricultural work was, as you might suspect, enormous. And it led the? U S to work out a programme specifically to recruit mexican workers and we're gonna talk more about that after we pause and think one of the sponsors that keeps our show going. This episode is brought to you by Mazda, leaving a pig for you drive a mountain don't really know the you're in well, and instead, it being a harrowing and frightening experience. It's an absolute delight. That is sickly what it was like when we had the

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It seems like it should be easy, but it's not just getting out of bed and getting your day started, trying to accomplish everything you need to do in your day that to do list as a lot easier when you're getting news stories and music to lift your mood and preparing for the day ahead, get connected to the things that make you laugh and make you think or make you want to reach out and share with a friend every morning with us. It's Elvis Doran in the morning show listen to us on cue, one or two or anywhere in the world on the Iheart radio. App to return to them are thorough programme. This

the shift in the workforce during World WAR two had immediate and detrimental effects on agriculture. Soon after the war began, the southwest cotton and vegetable growers were petitioning Congress to hire temporary workers to help them build a labour shortfall that basically met they couldn't harvest within needed to harvest. The key here was that this workforce would be temporary. In the words of a report from President Harry S, Truman's commission, on migratory labor leader, in on an one thousand nine hundred and fifty one quote the demand for MIKE Labour is thus essentially twofold to be ready to go to work when needed to be gone when not needed. So the United States, leaning on Franklin D, Roosevelt Good Neighbour policy, started trying to work out a bilateral agreement with Mexico that would allow mexican nationals to enter the United States to work and then return home when they were done at first make.

Co was reluctant to do this for a number of reasons. Mexican citizens who had previously emigrated to do exactly these types of work had face discrimination and exploitive treatment and the United States many had been forced out of their jobs and, stranded during the great depression. So basically, Mexico remembered all of that and just didn't have a lot of confidence that its citizens would be treated fairly if they went back to the United States or work. So Mexico insisted that any agreements spell out protections for its citizens. When that would tact mexican laborers while in the United States, and would protect Mexico's own industries from suffering due to a lack of workers.

Mexico did, however, see some potential benefits to allowing its citizens to work in the United States. It was hoped that anyone who entered the programme would return home with money that would be injected into the mexican economy running parallel with. That was the idea that Mexico's workers would learn new techniques relating to agriculture and then bring those new techniques back to Mexico. The result of this negotiation between Mexico and the United States was the breasts programme, which was launched in nineteen forty, two by executive order and then formalised by a bilateral agreement on April twenty six nineteen, forty three, it with

later be amended by public law. Seventy eight and one thousand nine hundred and fifty one the basic terms of the bracero program would be that this would be non military work not acceptable to recruit mexican nationals to work in agriculture and then put them into the military service. Mexican nationals would be protected from discrimination. Employers would pay transportation and living expenses, as well as a fair wage.

Workers would get medical and sanitary services at no cost to them. People in rolling in the research programme would sign a spanish language contract and be parent paid, a fair wage that would not be less than what was standard for anglo workers in that area, and workers under the age of fourteen were not allowed. There were also protections if there was a shortage of work, guaranteeing a subsistence level pay if someone contracted with the Mexican National but turned out not to have work for them to do a percentage of the pursuers pay was also to be saved and returned to them once they returned to Mexico. The criteria for the workers themselves,

They had to be young, healthy men who had agricultural experience but did not own land of their own. They also needed to have a letter from local authorities saying that their labour wasn't needed where they actually lives, and that was to try to diminish the impact on Mexicans Mexico's own labour force. Applicants would go to collection points in Mexico, be fingerprinted, be sprayed down with DDT and then be taken to the United States In spite of concerns that mexican nationals would take jobs away from Americans at first, this seemed like usually beneficial agreement. The United States would get the farmer labor it needed and Mexico

new modernized, farming techniques and injection of cash into its economy and jobs for citizens who needed them. However, things took a turn for the worse pretty much immediately. Most of the work to be done was known as stoop labour. This was cultivation work that was done using a short handled HO stooped over rose into the in the fields. This was gruelling and like it could have been done with a long handled ho, instead of a short handled her that required you too literally stoop over, but for some reason people thought along handled. Rep PO was damaging to the crops today, these short handled HO is regarded as an occupational hazard and in many states it is banned as unsafe. There were also way more interested mexican nationals than there were jobs and soon officials,

assessing applications were excepting bribes to move people ahead of the line, recruitment efforts became prone to corruption. People who didn't meet these qualifications for one reason or another, also started using the constant traffic back and forth across the border to make the crossing them so of illegally and, as was the case before, there were still plenty of growers who are willing to hire these people for almost no money. Unscrupulous growers also figure that a lot of the mexican nationals who were actually part of the research programme didn't have a lot of proficiency in English and weren't aware of the pay and protections they were legally entitled to under the terms of this programme. This definitely was not universal in various parts of the United States for Sarah is organised themselves and went on strike to protest, lower wages and poor treatment that were specifically outlawed in the research programmes term.

Many growers flouted the rules of the programme and hired people who had crossed illegally to get around having to worry about all of this Mexico eventually refuse to send workers to the entire state of Texas because of flagrant hiring of unauthorized workers, as well as other abuses. So soon illegal border crossings were rampant and that employment, People who had entered illegally was widespread. Wages started to drop for basically every one, because there were so many low wage workers who had become part of the economy in the southwest that minimum standard housing and medical care. That was the

to be part of this programme also didn't materialise in a lot of people who actually were part of it wound up tightly, packed together in barracks, on canvas cots where respiratory diseases and other illnesses spread like wildfire. Over the twenty two year, life of this programme, four point: five million mexican nationals legally came to the United States to work some of them returning to the ass repeatedly under new contracts, but far more entered illegally. Outside the bounds of the programme, there was exe. A6000 percent increase in illegal immigration between one thousand nine hundred and forty four and one thousand nine hundred and fifty four support for the pro and which had never been universal started to wane after world war, two was over and Americans who would survive the war started to return home and try to reclaim their old jobs.

The official wartime programme ended on December thirty, first of nineteen, forty seven. Although the programme continued to be extended for peacetime purposes, for quite a while after that, and eventually Mexico fed up with what it saw as the United States refusal to enforce the terms of their bilateral agreement, stopped participating by just decline, to send any more workers through official channels. According to the Texas State, sterical associations, handbook of Texas, the. U S retaliated against Mexico's non participation in nineteen fifty one by allowing thousands of people to enter the. As illegally arresting them and then, rather than deporting them turning them over to the Texas Employment Commission to be put to work by the nineteen sixty three percent programme was officially on the way out labour

innovations had become a lot more influential in policy and had started advocating very vocally for jobs in the United States to be filled by Americans and not by Mexicans at the same time increase sing mechanization in the agriculture industry meant that a lot of the physical labour that had required this huge labour pool was disappearing. The need for physical labour became a lot smaller. The research programme needed to be re, authorize periodically, and there were increasingly contentious debates whenever it came up for renewal. It's real relations in nineteen sixty one and one thousand nine hundred, and sixty three in particular, were extremely hotly debated. There was a lot of pressure to end the program after a bus accident killed. Thirty two migrant workers in nineteen sixty three the research programme eventually expired. The following year in nineteen sixty four with analysed. Of the programme. One of the things that proponents had often sat about it turned out, apparently to be true a lot

People who were in favour of the programme insisted that american workers did not want to do this work, which is why it needed to be open to mexican nationals after the apple of the programme. There were about five hundred and nineteen thousand unemployed people in California, which should have been plenty to cover the seventy thousand people who were needed to do stoop labour in the agricultural industry, but the name. The nature of the work and the wages that were that were offered meant that a lot of these jobs went unfilled and tons of fruits and vegetables rotted in the field, so that there is a lot of argument that this should have been like a gradual phase out, rather than just an abrupt apples,

As we said at the top of the show running parallel to all of this was a mass deportation programme focused on Mexican nationals called the horrible name. Operation went back and we're gonna talk about that after we pause once again. Take a break in here from one of our faint has concert. Over the years has earned monkey and the team behind lore, unexplored and cabinet of curiosities have scour the globe to bring you tales from the past, with a hint of darkness, from superstitions in folk to the curious than the bizarre. But now it's time to bring that journey home, because, while America's history books are filled with people, pay since events that sit on lofty pedestals there's a whole other world of american history that waits for us in the shadows, tales of unlikely heroes, world Jane

tragedies and legends that are unique to the American Spirit stories that we call american shadows. Each episode is handcrafted by the good mild, tame and narrated by me, Lorn Voebel bomb while we might be travelling, some dark and lonely roads, you're also bound to learn, thing to along the way, get ready for a tour of American. His unlike any other, get ready, american shadows, catch percent of american shadows. Every other Thursday was an unoccupied, casts, die radio, app or wherever you get your bad to get back to you Jason went back as an example of how the United States thinking on immigration shifted in the nineteen thirties and fortys. President Franklin D, Roosevelt, combined.

Two other government agencies to form the emigration and naturalisation service in nineteen thirty. Three, this agency was originally part of the Department of Labour and nineteen, forty that changed the eye and ass border patrol that fell under it moved from the Department of Labour to the Department of Justice that with that, but I and ass in the border between were no longer about work. They were about law enforcement and, as we The operation went back was a mass deportation effort that came along after the I s moved. The department of Justice is often portrayed as a swift, decisive effort to deport people who had entered the U S illegally, but it was really part of decades long effort that ran, as we said, parallel to most of the research programme in the nineteen forties, for example, special mexican deportation parties were established to try to apprehend and deport mexican migrant workers in nineteen forty five there was an attempt to reinforce targeted portions of the border with chain link. Fencing in

team, Fortys and nineteen. Fifty some border patrol agents ran and unsanctioned quote little barbershop, basically clippers that they carried with them to cut the hair of repeat immigration, offenders, sometimes unintentionally, humiliating ways in terms of the more above board, efforts to control immigration, a lot of them really, where cross national The United States wanted to keep illegal emigration from driving down wages and causing housing and social issues within its own borders and Mexico wanted to have enough workers to meet its own labour needs and also protect its citizens from exploitation and discrimination, while they were in the United States in nineteen. Fifty one a report on Mexico, migrant workers in the: U S, pinned all sorts of social and economic ills on illegal immigration and characterize this nation as an invasion, so

the? U S was diverting more and more of the border patrol and I am ass to the mexican border more than doubling the number of agents that were stationed there and between nineteen forty three. Nineteen fifty three there were a lot more people apprehended in illegal border crossings. The number rose from allow thousand seven hundred and fifteen and nineteen forty three to eight hundred and eighty five thousand five hundred eighty seven in nineteen. Fifty three with me, seconds making up more and more of those apprehended. At the same time, though, the United States didn't actually increase the emigration and naturalisation services budgets or, even though there are more even on the mexican border. There were fewer agents overall, with the forces numbers dropping a third we one thousand nine hundred and forty two and one thousand nine hundred and fifty one Dwight D Eisenhower took office as president in nineteen fifty three, it's estimated three million mexican nationals in the US had entered the country illegally. The previous efforts

port them had increasingly stalled out, because so many farms and ranches were dependent on this illicit labour pool in the words of Walt Edwards, who served in the border patrol from nineteen fifty one nineteen sixty four when we caught illegal aliens on farms and ranches, the farmer rancher would often call and complain and, depending on how politically connected they were, there would be political intervention that political intervention basically getting their workers out of jail and turning away from the fact that they were not supposed to be in the United States and nineteen. Fifty four Eisenhower appointed general Joseph Swing, also known as jump and Joe as the commissioner of the immigration and naturalisation service swing started. Transferring immigration officials,

spent a long time in the southwest to other parts of the country, with the hope of breaking all those social and political ties to all the local farmers, ranchers and political bigwigs. That was leading the service to not actually enforce immigration. Then, on June, ninth, one thousand nine hundred and fifty four swing announce the commencement operation, wet back one arm of the operation, was meant to physically apprehend and remove people who had illegally emigrated into the United States. The other was meant to Besides this effort to make sure people who work in the country illegally, knew about it and see the deportation force as a threat. A lot of this publicity deliberately exaggerated. The size and aggressiveness of the deportation force in the hope of scaring people into leaving the country voluntarily. On June 17th, one thousand nine hundred and fifty four immigration officials started the actual sweeps to apprehend and deport people who had illegally immigrated about seven.

And fifty immigration agents moves, nor through California, in Arizona they started than those two states, because the entrenched resistance to deportation was lower. There's their hoping to kind of good foothold before moving on to places where it was more contentious. The goal of apprehending a thousand people who had entered the country illegally every day by the end of July. Fifty thousand people had been arrested in California in Arizona and an estimated four hundred. Eighty eight thousand had fled the United States on their own. And heiress Tracy had said it started in California, in Arizona, but from there it moved into Utah Nevada, Texas in Idaho, in immigration officials put the people. They were We're headed in these sweeps onto trains and buses bound for Mexico far enough South that they simply couldn't turn around and re, enter the United States

Two ships were also used for this purpose. The emancipation and the more curio carried people from Port Isabel in Texas about five hundred miles to very crews in Mexico, At the time, the iron as claimed that it deported one point, three million people during operation went back, but those numbers have not really held up to historic. Scrutiny. It was definitely lower than that and it might have been as low as three hundred thousand these efforts. Actually disk did some of the agriculture industry and the states that were targeted by deporting their work forces, we said a lot of the agriculture industry and the southwest and West had become highly dependent on this illegal labour. The government tried to reassure people

they could get new labour through the research programme, which was still in effect at this point, in addition to the immediate impact that it had on the agriculture industry, there are other problems with product way back as well. Aside from its name, which I'm gonna say again is a racial slur, we would not normally say on a show every one of mexican descent, suspect whether they had entered the country illegally or not, and a lot of the lawful residence. Some of them american citizens were deported and error. Families were broken up when some members were caught up in a sweep another's weren't children were left with anyone without any one to look after them when their parents were arrested and deported mexican american communities were disrupted when their populations are basically Bessie made, and then that would basically leave whoever was left without the basic life amenities that they needed and the problems did not

The north of the border, people who were dropped off in Mexico were often left incompletely unfamiliar territory where they had no friends or family without any food. Without water and with no money. Eighty eight people from just one round up died of heat, stroke after being left in remote territory without food or water conditions on the emancipation and the more were also appalling, incredibly overcrowded and dismal on one voyage a riot broke out and the use of ships was eventually stopped after seven people drowned during one voyage, apart from all of that that ten percent of their pay that was supposed to be withheld for legitimate participants of the research programme and then returned to them when they returned to Mexico, alot of people never saw it. A settlement was in the works in two thousand and eight to restore this.

Pay to the former workers and their descendants, but as I've twenty thirteen there were still marches and protests going on to have this money restored because it had never actually happened. So that is the basics of like this long, chronic, convoluted intertwined effort to both recruit and deport mexican nationals in the United States. I know for sure that there are folks in the world whose mindset is will there illegally in here. It's Damn right. I personally think that if you are travelling hundreds of miles away from your family to do physically gruelling stoop labour for little money. Lake. Imagine what your life is like to lead you to that decision right. Yet, like what other option might you how young have empathy? That's what I'm saying

Pays them unstring joining us on this matter day, since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard of illiteracy, Facebook, url or something similar over the course of the show that could be obsolete. Now, our current EU mail address is history. Podcast at I heart, radio dot com are old, hell stuff works, they militarist no longer works. You can find us all over social media at missed in history, and you can subscribe to our shadow on apple pod task. Google pod task, the eye heart radio app and wherever else he listened, the fog casts Stuckey Miss than history class in the production of high heart radio. For more by cap. For my heart, radio mither by her radio haven't Mancha or wherever you listen to your favorite, Joe.

If you crack open in american history, but it sure to be filled with founding fathers bloody war and the inventions that brought this country to the industrial age, but there's a whole other world that waits for us in the shadows. Pails of unlikely heroes, world changing tragedies and legends that are unique to this country spirit. So join me. Lauren vulgar bottom for a tour of american history, unlike any other during new podcast my heart, radio and errand monkeys, grim and mild, get ready for american Shadows Listen to american shadows on apple pie casts or wherever you get. Your pat casts.

It seems like it should be easy, but it's not just getting out of bed and getting your day started, trying to accomplish everything you need to do in your day that to do list as a lot easier when you're getting news stories and music to lift your mood and preparing for the day ahead, get connected to the things that make you laugh and make you think or make you want to reach out and share with a friend every morning with us, it's Elvis Joanne in the morning show listen to us on cue, one or two or anywhere in the world. Only I hurt radio app.