Farmworkers Self-Help, Inc.

Why Do They Come?
The reasons that people enter the U.S without papers are varied and complex; but in all cases like all immigrants before them, it is about the belief that a better life can be had by going to the United States for work. First and foremost the majority who enter the U.S. without papers would prefer to have papers, if they could get them. But U.S. immigration quotas severely limit the access of Mexicans and other Latin American citizens.
Mexicans drawn to border towns to work in the maquiladoras under NAFTA suffered from the impact of US corporations relocating their factories from Mexico to China, Indonesia and other third world countries for even cheaper labor and little or no labor and environmental laws. NAFTA has not helped the Mexican economy keep pace with the demand for jobs. In fact NAFTA opened the door for American grown corn to glut the Mexican market, driving many Mexican farmers off their farms. More than a third of Mexico’s farm jobs have disappeared. After 14 years of "free trade" under NAFTA, real wages in Mexico's manufacturing sector are lower than before the agreement.
In the last two decades Mexican purchasing power has been decimated. The Mexican government ended subsidies on the prices of basic necessities, including gasoline, bus fares, tortillas and milk. Estimates place at least 40 million people living in poverty, with 25 million in extreme poverty.
Why Do They Stay?
Before the increase in the Border Patrol’s manpower along with surveillance cameras, towers, planes, vehicles, weapons, etc. the undocumented moved back and forth fairly easily across the border. And most did not intend to stay, wanting to work and earn enough for a business, equipment, a house or farm and then return to their families in their home villages or cities.
The radically increased dangers and difficulties of crossing have had an unexpected consequence in actually increasing the numbers of those staying. The exorbitantly high smuggler fees has raised the need to stay longer to pay off those fees and then earn the goal amount before returning home. However, these longer stays also translate into an increased likely hood that they will settle permanently in the U.S. Those who are single are likely to marry and have children further complicating their immigration status and/or their desire to leave. There are a great many “mixed” families in the U.S. where parts of the family are citizens or legal residents and the rest are undocumented. For those who have wives, children, husbands or other close family members not in the U.S., the inability to travel easily back and forth and their strong familial ties dictate the reunification of the family, contributing to the growing numbers of the undocumented entering the U.S.
Nativism in America – History Hurts
Nativism - A sociopolitical policy, especially in the United States in the 19th century, favoring the interests of established inhabitants over those of immigrants. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 27 May. 2008.
Cycles of nativism have been around since the beginning of this country’s history. This so-called patriotic sentiment has provided excuses for American citizens to terrorize those who were deemed to not be “real Americans”; terror that has included anti-immigrant laws, forced deportations, imprisonment, theft and destruction of property, rape, lynchings, and other physical violence.

In the late 1700’s Alien and Sedition Acts were established to exclude or deport “foreigners” deemed dangerous to the incumbent political status quo or those who criticized the government. A Naturalization Act sought to limit the impact of immigrants in the electoral process by extending the waiting period for citizenship to 14 years. In its first statement on the issue of citizenship the Congress in 1790 restricted naturalization to “white persons”. The issue of race has continued to play a considerable role in immigration laws and quotas for over the past 230 years.
During the mid-1800’s a large wave of Irish and German immigrants significantly increased the number of Roman Catholics in the country. Protestants began to vilify these immigrants, calling them “Papists” and claiming that they brought crime and disease, were stealing native jobs and were overall immoral. Waves of violence by Protestant workmen led to the burning of an Ursuline Convent near Boston, numerous Irish Catholic churches were burned and riots in several cities that culminated in 30 deaths and hundreds wounded in Philadelphia in 1844. By the mid-1850’s the nativist American Party, also known as the Know Nothings, had won six governorships and controlled the legislatures of nine states. This group enacted numerous laws designed to harass and penalize immigrants, including Mexicans from the newly annexed properties that the U.S. gained in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe that included parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming as well as all of California, Nevada and Utah. The treaty’s promises of citizenship and retention of property rights regarding lands owned by Mexicans were routinely violated. The Know Nothing group was also responsible for the first literacy tests for voting that were initially designed to disenfranchise the Irish. The party collapsed in 1860 over internal disputes, primarily over slavery versus abolition.
Anti-Catholic activities continued to be a strong nativist mainstay. The American Protective Association, a secret society dedicated to eradicating “foreign despots.” targeted Catholics especially. One of its campaigns sought to eliminate German language instruction in the mid-west as a way to harass parochial schools. However in 1889, when Illinois and Wisconsin adopted such laws, immigrant voters responded by turning the incumbent Republicans out of office. The second incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915 had a distinct nativist flavor and Catholics along with immigrants, blacks and Jews were vigorously targeted.

Chinese exclusion was also a campaign for nativists in the west claiming that the Chinese were inferior and taking away white men’s jobs. The Chinese became targets of violence and legalized discrimination. In California Denis Kearney, himself an Irish immigrant, began the Workingmen’s Party on a platform of class warfare and decrees that all “Chinese must go!” He went so far as to threaten to burn down San Francisco’s city hall and to hang the Prosecuting Attorney if the Central Pacific Railroad did not discharge its Chinese employees. Anti-Chinese hysteria swept the state and violent mobs attacked Chinese businesses and homes. Mobs surrounded companies threatening to burn them down if they did not fire their Chinese employees. Under heavy pressure from California and other Western states, Congress passed the nation’s first restrictive immigration policy, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
The 1800’s also saw laws that made it impossible for Mexican, Chinese and other “foreigners” from participating in the California Gold Rush. Blacks were banned from most mining areas, for fear that slave owners would have an unfair advantage. It is estimated that over 4,500 American Indians died violent deaths at the hands of miners and their “militias”. Thousands more died from disease and starvation.
New anti-immigration legislation in 1914 ended immigration from Japan.
Discriminatory state laws targeted those of Japanese ancestry. California passed two Alien Land laws in 1913 and 1920 that prohibited “aliens ineligible to citizenship” from owning land. Immigration laws banned citizenship for Japanese immigrants until 1952. Discrimination in the workplace, housing and education were also common experiences for the Japanese and other Asian-Pacific Islanders.
An Americanization campaign targeting immigrants began in earnest in the early 1900’s. A 42-page federally commissioned study determined that the “new immigrants” comprised of Italians, Greeks, Poles, Hungarians, and Russians were less skilled and educated, more clannish, slower to learn English and less desirable for citizenship than the “old immigrants”, the Irish, English, Scandinavians, and Germans. The Federal Bureau of Education and the Federal Bureau of Naturalization joined forces and aided private Americanization groups who actively promoted the change of the new immigrant’s cultural traits, civic values, and most importantly their language.
Labor struggles after World War I were often led by foreign-born activists. In an effort to fuel his presidential ambitions, then United States Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer engaged in an anti-communist campaign, claiming that that there was a communist plot to overthrow the country. With the help of J. Edgar Hoover, then chief of the Justice Department's Radical (later General Intelligence) Division, the Palmer Raids (1919-1920) were implemented. Despite there being no concrete evidence over 10,000 suspected radical leftists, many of them members of the Industrial Workers of the World, were rounded up. More than 500 people were summarily deported. The American Civil Liberties Union and several prominent attorneys of the time documented rampant abuses of due process, illegal search and seizure, indiscriminate arrests, use of agents provocateurs, wiretaps and torture.

In the 1800s, unlike today, the Irish, Italian, and Polish were not considered "White." Racialism moved from ethnic pride and a homogenous national character in the late 1700s to aggressive manifest destiny and a pseudoscientific theory of supremacy that included eugenics. Scientific racism was a popular concept that was not only embraced by much of the public, it was also taught in science and biology courses in universities. This concept went so far as to establish the legally forced sterilization of “undesirables”, mostly minorities. Many principles of the American eugenics movement were included in Adolf Hitler’s plans for racial purity. The hysteria of the Palmer Raids reaffirmed the Anglo-Saxon stance that they were genetically superior and that Eastern and Southern Europeans could not be assimilated. With Anglo-Saxons taking credit for all advancements achieved in Western civilization they put forward the argument that letting in the “lower races” would pollute the nation’s gene pool and destroy the country’s democratic institutions. Congress reflected this belief with the enactment of the national origins quota system in 1924.
The Depression-fueled panic of the 1930’s painted targets on the backs of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans throughout the country. State governments passed legislation prohibiting the employment of aliens on work projects financed by government funds. Many private companies and industries also adopted an anti-Mexican policy in their hiring practices. The Depression-induced hysteria led to Mexicans being fired from their jobs, denied other work and eventually targeted by U.S. and state governments and local community groups to remove them from the country. A need to eliminate Mexicans from relief rolls was another reason cited for the repatriation movement, despite the fact that Mexicans made up less than ten percent of those on relief. Civic groups such as Los Angeles’ Citizens Committee for Coordination for Unemployment Relief advocated and assisted in the repatriation effort, declaring that Mexican held jobs were needed for their own (white) needy citizens, despite the fact that many employed Mexicans were legal residents or citizens. Thousands of Mexican families lost the homes and property that they owned and in many cases all of their possessions.
Outright lies, threats and physical coercion dominated the attempt to remove Mexicans from the country. In the face of the unrelenting harassment, thousands voluntarily returned to Mexico in despair because they could not find work. Many left voluntarily after being given false promises that they could freely return. Raids in several states with significant Mexican populations swept up citizen and non-citizen Mexicans alike. Thousands, regardless of their immigration status, were forcibly removed. They were arrested and without any due process put on trains, buses, private cars; whatever transportation could be found to send them to Mexico. Local police assisted immigration authorities, conducting raids to catch Mexicans in places known to be gathering places, including churches. Families were ripped apart and for many it would be years before they were reunited.
While other aliens were targeted for repatriation, the Mexican community suffered the most due to their distinct physical appearance and Mexico’s proximity to the U.S. More than 1 million Mexicans were repatriated to Mexico during this time, over 400,000 from California alone. Conservative estimates are that as many as 60% of those deported were legal U.S. residents or U.S. citizens. Mexico was completely unprepared for the mass influx of people, and the human suffering was extensive.

In the spring of 1942, between 110,000-120,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated to concentration camps in Arizona, California, Wyoming, Arkansas, and Utah. Despite the fact that the U.S. was also at war with Germany and Italy, only those of Japanese ancestry were incarcerated as a defensive move to secure the country. While the bombing of Pearl Harbor and a historical enmity toward those of Japanese ancestry living in America contributed to this incarceration; the specter of greed also looms large in the equation. The events in California where the largest numbers of Japanese lived depict a calculated avarice hidden by mass hysteria and patriotism. Many of the Japanese and Japanese-Americans living in California had family farms. Their agricultural expertise resulted in 35% of California's total crop production. There were over 6,000 small farms occupying approximately 250,000 acres of rich, fertile crop land. In a wave of patriotic disguised maneuvers, the California Chamber of Commerce, Agriculture Committee of the L.A. Chamber of Commerce, several banks and white farmer organizations campaigned heavily for the removal of the Japanese. The California Evacuated Farms Association of the U.S. Farm Security Administration helped white farmers acquire the property of Japanese-American competitors. Other Japanese owned real estate and businesses were also targeted for “acquisition”. The vast majority of the families incarcerated were financially devastated upon their release. After the war Congress deemed that those incarcerated could ask for compensation from the government. But, if they could not produce any of the records demanded by the government they would incur a $10,000 fine and five years in prison. Not surprisingly, few applied for compensation. For those who did apply and where successful, their return was usually far below the actual loss incurred.
In the 1950’s “Operation Wetback” a McCarthy-era program, targeted union organizers and supposed "communists" under the pretenses of stopping illegal immigration. More than 1.5 million Mexicans were either jailed or deported in the operation. Again, racial profiling was the instrument; communities were raided and terrorized and once again hundreds of thousands of legal residents and U.S. citizens were rounded up with the undocumented and deported.
In the 1980’s a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment brought forth an “English Only” movement that targeted government and the private sector. In 1986 the Immigration Reform and Control Act sought to address the issue of undocumented immigrants. The law made it illegal to hire or recruit undocumented workers and employers were to determine the status of their employee’s immigration status. The Act also provided an amnesty for undocumented people who had lived continuously in the U.S. prior to 1982. In the 90’s California gained the national spotlight with its nativist Proposition 187 that would have forced all public agencies to become immigration officers of sorts by requiring them to determine immigration status, deny services to those suspected or confirmed of being undocumented and report them to immigration authorities. The initiative was eventually thrown out by the courts. In 1996 a persistent recession in the U.S. led to calls for new restrictions on immigration. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act was passed, toughening border enforcement, closing opportunities for undocumented immigrants to adjust their status, and making it difficult to gain asylum. The law also expanded the grounds for deportation. It stripped immigrants of many due process rights, and their access to the courts. New income requirements were established for sponsors of legal immigrants. In the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, Congress made citizenship a condition of eligibility for public benefits for most immigrants. In 1997 a new Congress mitigated some of the overly harsh restrictions passed by the previous Congress. Some public benefits were restored to legal immigrants.
The 1996 immigrations laws that called for tighter border controls coupled with increased security since 9/11 has contributed to over 1000 deaths of undocumented immigrants trying to traverse the harsh and often dangerous terrains of the mountains and desert between the United States and Mexico. In 2007 alone over 200 people; men, women and children, died while trying to cross the border.

Despite the fact that none of the 9/11 terrorists entered through the Mexican border, in fact they all entered via legal visas, the ensuing frenzy after the attacks generated a laser beam of suspicion on the Mexican border. While Arabs and Muslims were now all persons of suspicion, other dark skinned people, especially Latinos, became targets of a national spirit of distrust. The events of 9/11 coupled with a long standing historical opposition to Mexicans has fueled the nation’s paranoia about its national security and its southern border. The nativist movement was quick to embrace the actions of the 9/11 terrorists as a reason to seal off the U.S./ Mexican border.
In 2003 parts of the U.S. Customs Service, the entire Border Patrol, the Federal Protective Service, Federal Air Marshals and the investigative arms of Customs and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) were combined together under Homeland Security and renamed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE special agents have the broadest investigative powers of any law enforcement entity in the U.S. ICE is expected to cost the nation about $8.8 billion dollars in 2008.
There are currently 1,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents at the northern border while an estimated 12,000 patrol the Mexican border. Yet, a Canadian Security Intelligence Study claims that there are more international terrorist groups located in Canada (50 organizations) than anywhere else in the world.
This is a glaring disparity in the militarization of the Mexico’s 1,969 mile long southern border versus the Canadian border of 3,145 land miles and 2,380 water miles (5,525 total miles). Could it be that the increased militarization since 9/11 is based on the imagined skin color of prospective terrorists? Perhaps it is the presumed threat of Muslims residing in Mexico? Yet the Muslim population of Canada is estimated as being over 750,000 while the U.S. itself has an estimated Muslim population of between four and five million. Mexico? A little over 300,000.
Currently immigration is a hot topic in our country. Illegal immigrants are being blamed for everything from high unemployment to global warming. We at Farmworkers Self-Help urge you to get to know the issues and understand the facts. If you must hate, hate the policies and politics that have created the immigration crisis and not the people that are caught up in the crisis.