National Public Radio (NPR), Morning Edition, March 23, 2005, Wednesday

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National Public Radio (NPR)

SHOW: Morning Edition 10:00 AM EST NPR

March 23, 2005 Wednesday

HEADLINE: Guest-worker program for illegal immigrants is being pushed by President Bush

ANCHORS: RENEE MONTAGNE

REPORTERS: EMILY BAROCAS

BODY:
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
President Bush proposes to control the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico with a temporary worker program. The US government tried a similar program beginning during World War II. For over two decades, millions of Mexican farm workers entered the United States with temporary work visas. At first, the Bracero Program helped reduce illegal immigration. It was later criticized for tolerating the mistreatment of Mexican workers. NPR's Emily Barocas has the story of an original Bracero.
EMILY BAROCAS reporting:
Guadalupe Martinez lives in a comfortable home just south of Los Angeles with his wife and grown son. When he came to America in 1952 to work as a Bracero, he shared a one-room wooden shack with dozens of other men. The old military bunker was situated on the fields where the men spent their days working.
Mr. GUADALUPE MARTINEZ (Mexican Immigrant): (Sings in a foreign language)
BAROCAS: Martinez came from the farming village of Tiksdan(ph), Mexico.
Mr. MARTINEZ: (Through Translator) For two or three years around 1952, it didn't rain. Because there was no rain, there was no way for us to feed ourselves. And that is why I became a Bracero.
BAROCAS: The Bracero Program was supposed to reduce illegal immigration and fill an expected labor shortage. In its early years, it did neither. Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, a conservative think tank, studied the effectiveness of the Bracero Program. He says it was a success eventually.
Mr. STUART ANDERSON (National Foundation for American Policy): Once increased Bracero admissions were combined with a more stable enforcement regime, we saw illegal entry drop dramatically.
BAROCAS: Very dramatically. Apprehensions of illegal immigrants dropped 95 percent at the peak of admissions. With a legal opportunity to come to America, thousands of workers from poor villages in Mexico flocked to recruiting stations, hoping for a job. Martinez was hired to pick onions on a farm in Sacramento. His contract was supposed to guarantee a minimum wage, housing, food and health care. But, says Vernon Briggs, professor of labor economics at Cornell University, these promises were often broken.
Professor VERNON BRIGGS (Cornell University): ...(Unintelligible) this is the problem of all these guest-worker programs, they do not enforce themselves.
BAROCAS: The Braceros worked under harsh conditions, up to 10 hours a day with hardly a break. Martinez explains.
Mr. MARTINEZ: (Through Translator) We would fill 900 boxes of onions for one truck. The smell was horrible and we had no way to protect ourselves from it, but that is how we had to work.
BAROCAS: More legal workers like Guadalupe Martinez meant there were fewer illegal workers, and the government went after those that remained. In Operation Wetback, the US rounded up and deported suspects, but, according to Vernon Briggs, it may have been too aggressive.
Prof. BRIGGS: Especially in those days, living along the border, a lot of poor people couldn't actually prove that they were US citizens and there was a massive deportation of what were perceived to be illegal immigrants.
BAROCAS: Congress ended the Bracero Program in the mid-'60s. By then, critics claimed humanitarian violations and farm work had become more mechanized. Without the guest-worker program, illegal immigration increased tenfold over the next dozen years. Briggs explains.
Prof. BRIGGS: They knew where the farms were that needed them. They know the employers wanted to hire them, and they knew how to find the jobs and how to get there.
BAROCAS: This set the stage for the explosion of illegal immigration that we see today, the problem the administration is looking to solve. Guadalupe Martinez came to America for the last time in 1976, 12 years after the Bracero Program ended. He eventually brought his family over. They lived illegally until the mid-1980s when an amnesty program made them legal residents.
Mr. MARTINEZ: (Through Translator) These are my stories, a little sad but they all happened.
BAROCAS: Four decades after the Bracero Program was abandoned, President Bush is again pushing for a guest-worker program. But to date, it remains a divisive issue in Congress.
Emily Barocas, NPR News, Washington.
MONTAGNE: You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.