Today, Latino farm workers (primarily Mexican) are the backbone of Oregon’s agriculture.  Oregon has almost 100,000 Latino farm workers. But they do not enjoy many of the basic protections provided for other US workers.  Federal laws that govern wages, hours (including overtime), and many benefits, do not protect farm workers.  States create their own laws for farm workers.  Many State laws, including Oregon laws, do not provide basic protections.  Farmworker housing is often substandard, and farm workers may be overcharged for housing, food, and transportation by labor contractors, ending up with very little in their paychecks.

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The Braceros Program was set up, just eight months after Pearl Harbor, to recruit Mexican farm laborers during WWII.  Under an agreement between the US and Mexican governments, Mexican farm workers were contracted to come to the US and harvest the crops that were needed for the US population and the soldiers fighting the war in Europe.  The contracts with the individual workers required them to return to Mexico, when they were no longer needed.

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At first, thousands, and eventually millions of Latino farm workers were recruited, even more after than during the war.  Though the Braceros Program ended in Oregon in 1947, Oregon continues to rely primarily on Latino farm labor to cultivate and harvest the State’s agricultural production.

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Braceros were supposed to have certain guarantees met in terms of housing, transportation, wages, recruitment, health care, food and the number of hours worked.  The contracts initially negotiated directly between the United States and Mexican governments even stipulated that there should be no discrimination against the Braceros.  However, most growers and the U.S government ignored the terms of the contracts.  The Braceros had no recourse.  The program finally ended nationwide in 1964.

At the end of the program in Oregon in 1947, the labor camps were closed, and all contracted laborers were supposed to return to Mexico.  Those that did not could be deported as illegal aliens – a practice that increased at the end of World War II and continues to this day.

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Use of the label “illegals” for Mexican workers can be traced to the ways that contracted workers were categorized while working under the Bracero Program.  Braceros went from being thought of and written about as heroes when they arrived in the state in 1943, to being called “illegals” by the late 1940s.

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Today, immigrant farm laborers exist as a captive labor force — desired on the one hand by growers for their hard work and low wages, but subject to detention and deportation by the INS, often for simply ‘looking illegal.”