-
Early Migration Labor and War
The earliest significant efforts to restrict immigration to the U.S. came in the late 1800s, when inspection stations were set up at ports of entry along the southern border. But controls began to ease because of labor shortages during World War I. The U.S. Border Patrol began in 1924, as Prohibition encouraged a brisk smuggling trade from Mexico into the U.S. The first mass deportations of Mexicans came during the Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 until the start of the Second World War. -
Period: to
The Braceros, Operation Wetback and Quotas
Fighting on two fronts in Europe and Asia during the war, the United States looked to Mexico to help keep America fed and its railroad running. The Bracero Program, started in August 1942 with a few hundred Mexican farm workers. By 1964, when the program ended because of floods of illegal migrants, improved farming techniques and reports that workers had been mistreated, more than 4.5 million Mexicans had participated. Illegal immigration increased after the war ended. -
Illegal Immigration Deemed Out of Control
The decade of the 1970s ended a long period of economic growth based on a development model applied widely in the years after World War II. The fundamental aim of this model was to create and sustain internal markets that could serve as springboards for broader economic growth. Over the course of the next decade it was progressively abandoned in favor of a new economic model based on international trade. -
Recession, Amnesty and the Right to Education
In the 1980s, Mexico’s economy was teetering, shaken by the nation's worst recession since the 1930s. In 1982, the peso was devalued repeatedly during the country’s economic crisis. High unemployment pushed more migrants to find work in the United States. That same year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that children who were illegal residents had the right to public school education. Maquiladoras continued to expand along the border towns, assembling goods for the U.S. market. -
Immigration Reform
During the 1990s, immigration was again at the forefront of the political reform agenda, starting with the Immigration Act of 1990 under President George H. W. Bush. It created a visa lottery system to promote "diversity" from underrepresented countries, such as some African nations. The law also initiated the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, which recommended that the government focus on improving border enforcement through more training for border officials. -
The Effects of NAFTA
The North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994, to eliminate tariffs over 15 years and to turn the United States, Mexico and Canada into the world’s second largest trading bloc after the European Union. Critics believed that the trade agreement would undercut Mexican farmers with cheap U.S. food imports and exacerbate inequality between the two countries. A flagging Mexican economy received an initial boost from foreign investment related to NAFTA. -
-
Period: to
9/11 and Homeland Security