The legacy of the bracero program, which brought 4.6 million Mexicans to the United States beginning in the 1940s, serves as a grim reminder of the potential for guest-worker exploitation and second-class treatment.

By Scott Martindale
With reporting by Leo Juarez and David Eisenberg

Unsafe working conditions. Visa fraud. Grossly inadequate wages. Racial discrimination and blackmail. These are only some of the legacies of the 1942 “bracero” program, the largest guest-worker program in U.S. history. Involving the migration of some 4.6 million Mexican agricultural workers to the United States over a two-decade span, the program was rife with corruption.

As Congress wrestles with legislative proposals this month to create a guest-worker program – which proponents say would help restore control at the country’s borders – historians and labor experts alike are warning of its potential pitfalls and dangers.

“I think that the worst thing that can happen is that we once again implement a program where people would just be valuable during their productive years,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. “What happened with the braceros is that many of them worked all their lives and now there’s no benefit and no support.”

Although the bracero program stipulated that guest workers receive certain labor protections, including reasonably priced meals, medical treatment, transportation, free housing and prevailing wages, most workers were mistreated and intimidated. Fearful of deportation by their employers, workers did not protest their living conditions.

Some braceros are still fighting today for compensation they say they is rightfully theirs. Under the bracero program, the U.S. government gave 10 percent of a worker’s pay to the Mexican government, and the worker could retrieve the money only by returning to Mexico at the end of the program. A majority, however, did not return, and the Mexican government has refused to pay up.

“Nobody knows what they are entitled to,” said Louis DeSipio, an associate professor of political science and Chicano studies at the University of California, Irvine. “I doubt anything will happen. The braceros don’t have any political pressure to apply to the Mexican government.”

In fact, demand for bracero jobs – lucrative in comparison to similar jobs in Mexico – was so high that it spawned corruption, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan immigration think-tank. Being chosen for the bracero program out of a pool of applicants often required paying a bribe to recruiters.

Although some tout the bracero program as evidence of the dangers of guest-worker programs, others say the bracero program is not the best gauge of a program’s chance of success today. Europe’s programs, which offer more modern-day parallels than the 64-year-old bracero program, are better indicators, said DeSipio, an expert on ethnic politics and immigration policy.

In post-World War II Germany, for example, a guest-worker program brought 2 million Turks to the country to help rebuild the shattered economy. Although Turkish immigrants are credited with helping to get Germany back on its feet, the immigrants continue to face discrimination and feel they will never rise above second-class status, according to an Associated Press report.

Under Germany’s guest-worker program, the immigrants were granted permanent temporary status – not permanent residency – and consequently had no path to citizenship, creating a “permanent underclass,” DeSipio said.

The U.S. guest-worker program introduced in February by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), like the German program, does not grant permanent residency to guest workers. But a competing guest-worker bill introduced by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) would provide a path to permanent residency for these immigrants.

One fact that every guest-worker program has proven is that temporary workers are anything but temporary. Most braceros stayed in the United States permanently after the program was formally cancelled in 1964, and immigrants are now more likely than ever before to stay in this country, according to a report by the Manhattan Institute, a New York-based think-tank.

“The traditional flow of migrant farmworkers – truly seasonal laborers, usually single men – is giving way to a more diverse stream: both men and women, often with families, less rooted at home and more open to the lure of life in America,” Manhattan Institute senior fellow Tamar Jacoby wrote last month.

Rather than defend or condemn the guest-worker programs being considered in Congress, some immigrant-rights groups are simply emphasizing that appropriate safeguards must be in place to prevent future exploitation of immigrants like the braceros. Only then can a future guest-worker program be successful, they say.

“If it’s done, we want to make sure that it’s done in such a way that workers are protected, that they are taken care of,” said Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers union.