America's Last Guest Worker Program: "a System Designed for Maximum Exploitation"

Millions of people have taken to the streets in immigrant-rights protests mostly focused against vicious legislation passed by the U.S. House that would criminalize undocumented workers and anyone who assists them. But the "compromise" proposal in the Senate falls far short of justice.

Among the provisions of the propoal by Sens. John McCain and Ted Kennedy is a guest-worker program that would give legal status to migrant workers brought into the U.S. to work for a specific contract. The politicians claim the guest-worker system would be a generous "reform," and some leaders among immigrant-rights organizations support it, viewing it as the "realistic" alternative to the House bill.

But in fact the history of the last major guest-worker program in the U.S. -- the so-called bracero program, from 1942 to 1964 -- shows that the reality of such a system is very different from the rhetoric promoting it.

The bracero program was introduced in 1942, a year after the U.S. entered the Second World War. The program, negotiated between the U.S. and Mexican governments, brought approximately 4.8 million Mexican contract laborers to work in the U.S., primarily as agricultural workers in California and Texas. The term "bracero" refers to those who work with their arms, from the Spanish word for arm "brazo."

Though it was supposed to be a temporary measure to fill a wartime labor shortage, the program was so lucrative that it was extended until 1964.

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