The failure of policy makers to recognize the self-policing of "circular" migration is what created the border "crisis"

In her new book, Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration, Ana Raquel Minian talks of the “bewilderment” of many Mexican migrants about the unfair attacks made on them. “For Mexican migrants, the rhetoric about their place in the nation was particularly painful because it failed to address their contributions to the United States"--one of which, of course, is contributing the coffers of the Social Security fund that most will never benefit from. While the Trump administration repeatedly claims that Latin America is sending its “worst” to the U.S., the fact of repeated ICE raids of workplaces would suggest otherwise; news reports about attempts to replace the workers following the Mississippi poultry plant raids via local job fairs have been timid in noting that most of the attendees have also been Hispanic. 

Minian’s book chronicles a crucial period when the U.S. basically found itself in a “crisis” of its own making. Mexico had for many years “criminalized” or otherwise discouraged emigration to the U.S. precisely for the reason that it believed that its “best” and hardest-working people were leaving the county. It was not Mexico but the U.S. who in 1942 proposed the “Bracero” temporary guest worker program, to fill labor shortages as World War II was underway. Mexico decided to accept the offer, seeing it as a way for its own nationals to acquire new skills to use when they came home. The program continued after the war, in part because many returning GIs felt the country “owed” them a better life than they previously experienced, a “promise” underlined by the benefits inferred veterans by the first GI Bill. With returning veterans no longer willing to do “demeaning” work such as farm labor, contract labor under the Bracero program continued on an annual basis for more than two decades. 

Mexico still frowned upon excess emigration, and cooperated with U.S. immigration authorities during the so-called “Operation Wetback” during the Eisenhower administration to force the return of the workers it regarded as “indispensable” to Mexico’s own economic growth; the Mexican government had previously “cooperated” with the “repatriation” of U.S. citizens of Mexican heritage during the Great Depression for the same reason. The problem for many Mexican workers was that when they returned home there were no jobs in which to utilize whatever skills they learned in the north, so they had no motivation to return. One must remember that before the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act there was no “quota” on the number of immigrants from the Western Hemisphere, and the U.S. controlled the number of guest workers from Mexico administratively—i.e. expelling “surplus” labor when there was public pressure to do so. Before 1965, the term “illegal immigration” from Mexico wasn’t even used in policy discussions, and polling showed that few Americans thought it was a real problem; in fact the 1965 act itself did not even address “illegal” immigration from Mexico or any other country in the Western Hemisphere. 

But the effect of ending of the Bracero program in 1964 and the 1965 immigration law had very much the same result—but for different reasons—as the 1924 immigration law, which ended unfettered immigration from  Europe and especially from countries that “Anglos” considered were the home of “inferior races.” Over one million Europeans a year for the first five years after the law was instituted immigrated illegally to the U.S., the largest contingent coming from Italy. This influx of illegal immigrants from Europe was only “stemmed” by the combination of the Great Depression and the 1929 Registration Act, which essentially provided “amnesty” for most illegal immigrants from Europe for the next several decades, until immigration from Europe ground to a trickle, and the 1965 law “safely” tightened immigration standards, since European immigrants were less likely to be effected by any discriminatory effects. 

The 1965 law was supported by many lawmakers who claimed that previous immigration policy in regard to countries in the Western Hemisphere “discriminated” against immigrants from other countries, mainly Europeans. It wasn’t just “Mexicans” who were objected to; Southern lawmakers like Sen. Sam Ervin warned of an “influx” of immigrants from certain Caribbean islands that had largely African populations. The tired argument that “Mexicans” were “stealing jobs from Americans” was of course used despite the fact that this simply was not true; the motivation, as always, was racial in nature, since the same argument was not used to describe European immigrants (or later, Asian and Indian immigrants). 

The real effect of ending first the Bracero program and then the implementation of the 1965 immigration law was to disrupt what had been a “circular” inflow/outflow process. Male migrants left their families in Mexico to come to work in the U.S. in seasonal jobs, and left when there wasn’t any more work, and this continued with hardly any notice because there had been little presence of a border control, and the Border Patrol itself was initially instituted to stop illegal immigration from countries like China (in the film Breaking Point, John Garfield’s fishing boat captain tried to make some fast cash by transporting Chinese immigrants illegally from Mexico). Inflow/outflow migration more or less balanced out on its own, because the border between the U.S. and Mexico was not a “hard” one. 

Thus the 1965 law created the beginnings of a “crisis” by disrupting two generations of practice in which Mexican men left their families to earn money in the U.S., and then returned voluntarily. This circular movement continued for a time, only now much of it was done without the proper “papers.”  Illegal migration went up from practically nothing in 1964 to 275,000 arrests in 1970, and on upward. This was fueled not just by short-sighted, hypocritical and racially-inspired U.S. policy, but a new attitude toward emmigration in Mexico itself during the economic downturn of the 1970s—that migrant workers were “surplus” workers, and it was better off to just let them go. 

These migrants essentially became “stateless”—the U.S. was actively working to prevent them from entering the country, and Mexico was trying to prevent them from returning—or at least giving them less incentive to return because of the lack of job opportunities. Mexico’s economic development programs during the 70s and 80s (and even today) benefited largely urban areas and large commercial farms, while leaving out rural people and small farmers, and those who did not have access to work were regarded as this “surplus” labor. And social safety net programs are largely non-existent in Mexico, a country where there is no such thing as “free” public education, not even for the poorest people. 

And things would only get worse with the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which intended to reduce illegal immigration by “criminalizing” undocumented labor. The racist “philosophy” behind it was enunciated by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: “Our nation’s ability to control its demographic future is key to retaining the economic and political liberties which we value.” Thus the 1965 and 1986 law not just “criminalized” migration and labor from Latin America, but racialized the issue while disrupting the long-standing benefits of “circular”  labor migration which imposed its own kind of “control” over the level of migration. Instead of facing reality, many in this country prefer to demonize, dehumanize and discriminate against not just undocumented migrants, but Hispanics in general, with the current “Fuhrer” of this country leading the charge. The U.S. Supreme Court, which has agreed to take on the DACA issue, is also culpable; its 1976 The United States v Martinez-Fuente decision allowed for an “association” between “Mexican appearance” and “illegality”—despite the fact that 80 percent of all Hispanics in this country are in fact U.S. citizens, a fact that I suspect most “real” Americans find hard to believe, a belief made more hypocritical in that it is one thing to cross a river to get here, and quite another to have crossed an ocean to claim “ownership” of a land that already belonged to another people—and in some cases to the descendants by tens of thousands of years those they deny “legality” to. 

It’s bad enough that we already have a “president” who only ran on a “lark,” never expecting to be elected, was completely unprepared and unqualified for the job, operates solely on “gut instinct” and personal prejudice, and is probably the laziest man to occupy the position in history. And he and his racist minions like Stephen Miller who have never worked on honest day in their lives are merely symptomatic of a country whose willful ignorance of history has condemned a whole people. Policy stupidity, racist ignorance and failure to recognize culpability is the reason why there is a “crisis” at the border. The creation of a "hard" border and "zero tolerance" have done nothing to mask the foolish mistakes of U.S. immigration policy, only fueling an all-or-nothing dilemma for migrants and their families, particularly for those wishing to escape violence in Central America--a situation that the U.S. helped to create by deporting organized gangsters bred in the U.S. to those countries.  Those who are looking for the people who are turning this country into something unrecognizable need only look in the mirror.