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The Bracero Program was a mid 20th century guest worker program. The history of the program is the material for a fascinating touring exhibit organized by the Smithsonian. The
result was, as the subtitle of the exhibit explains, "a bittersweet harvest."
I visited the exhibit at Cal State University Channel Islands . And the wonderful details they presented made me think in depth about guest worker programs in general.
The Bracero Program may have been the best guest worker program possible but it still was demeaning
to the participants, fraught with corruption and caused some
exploitation of workers. On the other hand it gave millions of Mexican
workers: jobs, money and a vision of another life.
It is generally a bad idea to create a group of people who are by
definition second class citizens But if guest workers is the only way
to get the vast majority of Americans to accept more workers from Mexico
then we should have another Bracero program. It would certainly be
better to allow more circular migration but so many people are "slightly
xenophobic" that they won't allow it. The operative saying here is
"don't let the perfect be the enemy of the better." Too many people are
suffering as the US builds fences and deports workers but does nothing
to solve the festering problems of undocumented visitors and jobs going
overseas.
The Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) proposed by John McCain and
George Bush in 2006 included a guest worker plan. As a result it was
opposed by organized labor and couldn't get enough Democrat votes to
clear the Senate. The plan proposed by the Democrats in this Congress
didn't have a guest worker program and it was opposed by the farm state
Republican who had supported the McCain bill and itnevr came to a vote.
A CIR plan that includes: increased border security, employer sanctions,
a rationalization process for the undocumented, an agricultural guest
worker program and a reasonable level of future immigration can pass
even a divided Congress. And as I learned fron the Smithsonian Bracero
Exhibit guest worker programs aren't all bad and they are certainly
better than the current sneak and don't peek method we have of
harvesting our crops.
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