The Great See-Saw: Mexi-Cali Immigration Policy History
Nov 21, 2024
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Portrait of several Mexican Americans deported amidst Hoover's "Real Jobs for Real Americans" in 1929
As I was preparing for an elective with Refugee Health Alliance at their border health clinic in Tijuana last month, I wanted to make sure that I was well-informed about the complex immigration health policies that had led up to today. As philosopher George Santanaya famously stated, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Respecting the clinic patients and asylum seekers I worked with meant doing my homework: here are my takeaways, from the Mexican American War in the 1800s up to our modern-day struggles.
The See-Saw of Recruitment and Rejection
Modern Day Migration at the Mexi-Cali Border
In the Beginning
It all began with the Mexican American War way back in 1846! American troops pushed far south and captured Mexico City - the war ended in 1848 with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This treaty promised three important things:
Mexico would cede rights to Texas
Mexico would sell 525,000 square miles of other territory to the US for $15 million (inflation-adjusted to today about $550 million) - included the entire state of California!
Mexicans living in California would have the choice to become US citizens, and their established land rights would be honored.
This was a pretty sweet deal for Americans! As luck would have it, the following year, gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The Gold Rush led to a huge influx of immigrants from all over the world. As these folks rushed in, the US government turned a blind eye to many violations of land rights promised to newly minted Mexican American citizens living in California.
Immigration exploded from Mexico into California in the early 20th century, with the coupling of a revolution in Mexico and a strong US economy. Most commonly, the bridge from El Paso to Juarez served as the Mexican Ellis Island. The Mexican American population ballooned by a factor of eleven from 8k in 1900 to more than 99,000 individuals two decades later. By the 1920s, Mexican Americans made up 3% of the California population.
The See-Saw of Recruitment and Rejection
Just as in today's political climate, Mexican American immigration policies in the 1900s fluctuated wildly from one presidency to the next.
In 1929, Hoover introduced the "Real Jobs for Real Americans" act. As the Great Depression set in, white Americans started to see Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants as unwelcome competitors for scarce jobs. Hostility grew, and Hoover's act pushed "repatriation drives" held by local governments, deporting Mexican American citizens and simultaneously disallowing anyone of Mexican descent to occupy government jobs. Ultimately, 1.8 million Mexican American US residents were forcibly deported to Mexico during the 1930s, regardless of citizenship status.
Then, the tides turned. With the advent of World War II and the deployment of many young American men, there were fewer laborers to sustain the US agricultural sector. Starting in 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Bracero Program"/Mexican Farm Labor Program was initiated. Essentially, the program allowed Mexican laborers to enter the US on short-term contracts to fill the void created by the draft. For the next two decades, 4.6 million laborers arrived from Mexico into the US through this program, and most settled in California. In spite of this government-sanctioned program, many landowners circumvented the system and hired undocumented workers instead of those who arrived through the Bracero Program to decrease their expenses. Once again, we see history repeating itself.
Mexican farm laborers receiving temporary work permits through the "Bracero Program"
A third swing back to hostility toward Mexican immigrants came in 1954, when Dwight D. Eisenhower enacted the shockingly named "Operation Wetback." This entailed another round of mass deportation, which send 4 million Mexican American citizens and Immigrants to Mexico. Mind you, this was in the middle of the active Bracero Program attempting to recruit Mexican laborers to the US agricultural sector - truly dizzying shifts in public sentiment and governmental response.
Modern Day Migration at the Mexi-Cali Border
That brings us to what I shall term "modern" immigration policy. I won't bother to go into the details of the forced separation of families here, or the detention and/or expulsion of unaccompanied minors. These events certainly occurred, often in an officially sanctioned manner. Suffice it to say there has been considerable backlash, and such practices have since been minimized or eliminated under the Biden administration. Though, this is not to suggest that the immigration policy situation at the Mexi-Cali border is all sunshine and roses...
The COVID-19 pandemic brought with it a great excuse to dust off and utilize Title 42, an old Emergency Health authority first established in 1944 to protect US citizens from tropical diseases that many soldiers were at risk of bringing back after deployments to tropical environs. This act was reinstated March of 2020 and persisted until May of 2023 - essentially using the auspices of public health efforts to undo the basic right to seek asylum along the US-Mexican border. Title 42 was used 2.8 million times during this time period to reject requests for legal entry.
As Title 42 phased out, Title 8 took its stead: denying entry at the US-Mexico border or expulsion only with due processing. However, with the advent of the CBPOne app to apply for an asylum court hearing, requests for asylum as they now stand are rejected straight out if individuals have already arrived in the US between ports of entry, or who have passed through other countries without evidence of applying for asylum in each preceding country. This has led to asylum shelters along the Mexi-Cali border bursting at the seams as hopeful asylum seekers await their CBPOne application confirmation and subsequent asylum case court date. Organizations like Refugee Health Alliance provide much-needed medical care to these individuals and families living in limbo.
Today, one out of five US residents self-identifies as Latinx, and a quarter of the patients I see on my shifts in the Emergency Department I get to speak to primarily in Spanish. In 2050, it is estimated that roughly a quarter of US residents will herald from Latinx cultural backgrounds. Yes, this is a huge incentive to teach my son (and future child!) Spanish as a second language, and teach them about the culture I grew up in in Lima, Peru as a child – a story for another day. For individuals who didn’t grow up around folks from Central or South America, sometimes this knowledge comes as a shock, just as it did in the 1920s, and again in the 1940s with huge cultural and political backlash and forced deportations. This see-saw of emotions, this flux of immigration and strong feelings on both sides about how best to implement immigration policy is nothing new. As we approach increased division in this country with regard to public sentiment toward immigration, I hope that we can take heed from our countries’ shared histories, and approach the topic of immigration with nuance and respect.
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