Mexacan Immigration before the 1960's

Hispanics have been immigrating to America since the beginning of the Spanish Colonial era. Up until the 1920’s Mexican Americans have boomed in rural places in america. The 1920’s was meeting the beginning of a renaissance, a better promised life for both native americans as well as immigrants. Businesses were booming, wages were higher, and the industry was creating a bright future for America. However, Mexican Americans continued to face hardships as well as few successes leading up to the 1920’s. Whether these were Native born Americans with a Hispanic background or newly immigrated Mexicans, Mexican Americans faced the hardship of poverty, discrimination, segregation, and struggles during the 1920’s.

David G Gutiérrez’s Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity discuss the deep and complex understudied relationship between Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. This relationship was a natural consequence of the mass illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States that had constantly been increasing the population of “ethnic Mexicans” and along with it brought tensions between those who were Americans of Mexican descent and had been living here for generations and those who had freshly arrived to the United States and as such did whatever they had to do to make a living.

Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz’s, Labor and Legality is a book written on the Mexican immigrant network in the U.S. She centers it on the Lions, a group of Mexican men from Leon, Mexico that all share their lives and help explain the many networks and strategies that are used in order to excel and gain happiness. There have been many different sorts of misconceptions about immigrants, and in recent years about undocumented immigrants from Mexico. The U.S. has made a sort of war on illegal immigrants and has made it a seemingly high priority in the media and in politics. Therefore, many Americans have been mislead and ill-informed about the history of immigrants/undocumented immigrants. Gomberg-Muñoz’s Labor and Legality helps set us straight. She unveils undocumented immigrants for the people that they are instead of the criminals that the media leads many to believe. Although she doesn’t have a wide range of participants for her study, I believe that she addresses many of the misconceptions and just plain ignorance that American people have of people that are undocumented; why stereotypes are supported by the people themselves, why politicians include stronger illegal immigration laws, and everything in between. Many of her topics reveal a sort of colonialism that the U.S. practices on Mexico; the exploitation of undocumented peoples to the benefit of the U.S. through economics, hypocritical laws and campaigns, and the racist and prejudice consequences.

While many remember the Great Depression as a time of terrible trials for Americans, few understand the hardships faced by Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the U.S. This paper examines the experiences of Mexicans in America during the Great Depression and explores the devastating impact of repatriation efforts. America has an extensive history of accepting Mexican workers when they are needed for cheap labor, and demanding that they be deported when the economic situation is more precarious in an attempt to open jobs for Americans. In the 1930s, “Americans, reeling from the economic disorientation of the depression, sought a convenient scapegoat. They found it in the Mexican community.” Mexicans were blamed for economic hardships

During the 1970’s, Mexican Americans were involved in a large social movement called the "Chicano movement." Corresponding with the great development of the black civil rights movement, Mexican Americans began to take part in a series of different social protests in which they demanded equal rights for themselves. Composed mainly of Mexican American students and youth, these activists focused on maintaining a pride for their culture as well as their ethnicity to fuel their political campaign. Left out of this campaign initially though were Mexican immigrants.

In Harvest of Empire’s “Mexicans: Pioneers of a Different Type” Juan Gonzalez outlines how Mexican descendants contributed to U.S. prosperity and culture. Gonzalez’s assertion is that the Mexicans and their culture have been in the United States long before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the establishment of settlements and trade along the Rio Grande by Mexican pioneers, and the important factor Mexican-American workforce had in the nation. He supports his argument using historical records, individual’s stories and local papers. Respectively, Gonzales provides information that Mexicans greatly affected the economic uprising and culture of United States across the border.

Although mistreatment caused considerable suffering for Mexican-Americans, it also forced them to overcome internal differences in order to form a secure community, and contributed to the eventual development of a sense of mexicanidad. Gutiérrez explains how the abuse faced by Mexican-Americans caused the formation of such ties, stating, “it is common for such newly created minority populations to develop a new sense of identity as a natural defense mechanism or as part of a larger ‘oppositional strategy’ against the prejudice and discrimination shown them by the majority or dominant group.” The Mexican-Americans developed barrios and colonias throughout the Southwest to act as such defense mechanisms. These were communities of Mexican-Americans

Many Mexican Americans have been able to accomplish their own versions of the American dream by attending a 4-year college, owning businesses, and taking on political and public service careers. However, Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants continue to face the hardships that their ancestors went through in the 20th century. The ethnic Mexican experience in the United States has been a difficult one for Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans of the first generation. Two key factors that continue to shape the lives of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants are labor laws and the citizenship process. Focusing on the research, statistics, and information provided by Mai Ngai “The Architecture of Race in American Immigration”, Natalia Molina’s, “In a Race All Their Own": The Quest to Make Mexicans Ineligible for U.S. Citizenship”, and George J. Sanchez, “Becoming Mexican American” will provide the cause and effect of labor laws and citizenship laws that made an impact on the lives of Mexicans during the 20th century.

The book Harvest of Empire offers many examples of the factors leading to migration, which include economic and political persecution. The book has a direct connection between the hardships Latinos faced economically and military in their perspective countries. By reading this book it is clearly stated that Latinos are on the verge of becoming the largest minority group in America. Juan Gonzalez presents a devastating perspective on U.S. history rarely found in mainstream publishing aimed at a popular audience. Few of those countries were immigrants from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Dominican Republic and Central Americans.

Haney Lopez describes the racialization of Mexicans in terms of ancestry and skin color. Although granted de facto White racial status with the United States conquest of much of Mexico in 1848 and having sometimes been deemed as White by the courts and censuses, Mexican Americans were rarely treated as White (5). Historically and legally, Mexicans have been treated as second-class citizens. Mexicans suffered the degradation accorded members of an inferior race, treatment nearly equivalent to the coinciding conquest of blacks and Native Americans (64). In 1857, for instance, Anglo mobs lynched eleven Mexicans in Los Angeles (67). The demographic and geographic custom of segregation in Los Angeles contributed to the growing cultural isolation and socioeconomic vulnerability of the Mexican community.

García’s book can be very dense at times, providing the reader with many numbers, graphs, and statistics. Nevertheless, these statistics provide the reader with a better understanding on how El Paso was being shaped by Mexican immigrants; it also provides a new light on immigration during the nineteen and twentieth century’s in the United States. Many times Mexican immigration is overlooked, and thought of, as a recent event, when people think of nineteenth century immigration many think of the European immigration into the United States, yet García’s study shows that people were

The "majority" or "creoles" (Mexican born natives) as they were called, "out number all the others ten to one." (Robinson, Fay) Yet they were treated the worst and, by the way, they were the ones who paid most taxes. These lower class peoples were forced to barely survive on meager pay for manual labor and menial jobs. Many of them ended up peddling or begging in the streets. (Americana)

This affected Mexican and Mexican Americans negatively. The federal government passed legislation that outlawed them from accessing jobs in projects that the central government financed. The aim of this policy was to leave the Mexicans with no choice but to move to their ancestral land (Calderón, pg 221, 1998). Private owned firms and industries motivated by the local and federal governments legislation to coerce the migrants to move back to their country, took measures that supported them. Since indigenous Americans who considered themselves as a superior, noble class owned most of them.

If you from America youve probably heard of an immigration issue from former U.S president canidates such as Donald Trump who believe we should strenghthen our borders. Even though almost all American´s are immigrants and that Mexian immigration has been going rapidly down since 2007. Almost 60 million immigrants have fled America to go back to Mexico. Thats a myraid for Mexican immgration being one of the largest groups in America. The only immigration that has been on the rise is Asian immigration. If immigration from Mexico continues to decline America maybe dealing with a shortage of food and many other problems.

They lose their unique culture while they were aggrieved by oppression and extortion when working in the United States. As a result, Mexican Americans farmworkers organized strikes to fight for civil rights and liberation struggle.