One of the key aspects of Trump's plans to ruin this country involves the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants back to Mexico. A lot of people are taking comfort in the idea that, even if a plan like that reached the point where we actually tried to implement it, finding that many people and coordinating the effort to get them back to the country from which they came is a logistical impossibility. It sure would be nice if that was true, but it's not.
See, despite all the hate and harsh words that get thrown around in relation to the subject of immigration from Mexico, there was a time when we, as a country, wanted as much of that as we could get. In the years between the Great Depression and the start of World War II, the rapidly expanding agriculture industry in the United States depended almost entirely on Mexican immigrants for cheap labor. So much so that at some point, it became a real problem for Mexico, seeing as how they had a thriving agriculture industry of their own and sort of needed all those workers we were siphoning away.
So with that in mind ... it's a good thing World War II eventually happened?
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Well that's certainly a bold stance to take.
Of course it wasn't, but the thing about a massive war is that it creates a lot of needs back home, and for the United States, one of those needs was a lot of workers to replace the ones we sent off to fight Hitler. So in exchange for not having to be an active participant in the war, Mexico agreed to send us workers on a short-term basis. It was called the Bracero Program. We also promised to shore up border security and put tighter restrictions on hiring workers who were in the country illegally, the thinking being that between sending back undocumented immigrants and workers here legally under the Bracero Program returning after two years, Mexico would eventually solve the massive labor shortage that was hindering efforts to industrialize their country.
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