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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Joan Baez was one of many who sang about the lack of value assigned Mexican farmhands imported pursuant to the Bracero program.
The program was instituted in 1942 to provide badly needed manual labor for agriculture with so many American men deployed overseas during the Second World War. And ran until 1964.
"Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
Adiós mis amigos, Jesús y María..."
"You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be deportees."
The lyrics were written by Woodie Guthrie following a 1948 plane crash at Los Gatos Canyon in central California where 28 killed were not named but disposed of collectively in the news reports as “deportees” – following that year’s harvest.
Deportees who had tilled the land, planted and cared for crops, picked the fruit and gathered the vegetables that Americans across the country relied on to feed their families.
Even after the program stopped, farmers in Ventura County and the Central Valley still needed cheap labor to make their land profitable. Too often to the detriment of human rights.
In 1965, Cesar Chavez head of the Latino United Farm Workers joined with Filipino-American grape workers in the start of the Grape Strike and Boycott. Also supported by Joan Baez.
With worker abuse against documented Californians constrained, enterprising subcontractors sourcing labor for agricultural and sweatshop needs by attracting Mexican workers, desperate to support their own families, to illegally cross the border.
Even under-the-table pay is a step above nothing when children are starving. With the leverage of “La Migra” to keep undocumented workers compliant, American employers found they could duck labor and safety laws, padding their profits.
As the housing crisis across California exploded in recent decades and the demand for construction labor exponentially increased, while political unrest often fomented by American corporate business interests drove people from their homes across Central and South America, and the undocumented population of Los Angeles skyrocketed.
Now desperately needed to clear and rebuild in the wake of the traumatic wildfires.
During the Biden administration, more than eight million people entered the country, about 60 percent without legal permission. Because of the demand for cheap labor – on farms, in factories and for the building trades.
Between Trump’s tariff shenanigans and his targeting of anyone who might be an illegal immigrant, many are now laying low or fleeing the country.
Pertinent factoids, many drawn from the non-partisan Public Policy Institute: About 16% of U.S. residents today were born abroad; the previous high had been 14.8% back in 1890.
As of 2023, 10.6 million Californians, a whopping 27% of its population, comprised 22% of the entire country’s foreign-born population. More than double that of any other state. Almost half of Californian children have at least one immigrant parent. Over a third of prime-working-age adults from 25 to 54 are immigrants, over half of all foreign-born Californians.
However, the state’s immigrant population increased only 5% (about 500,000) from 2010 to 2023, compared to 14% (1.27 million) from 2000 to 2010, and 37% (2.4 million) in the 1990s.
While the 49% of our immigrants were born in Latin America and 41% in Asia, California has attracted people from dozens of different countries around the world; Filipinos and Canadians, Dutch and South African, hundreds of thousands each from China, India, and Vietnam.
And after 2014, almost 10% more were born in Asia than Latin America. Many lack the education credentials to get ahead although 66% of recent immigrants from Asia have at least a bachelor’s degree compared to 41% of US-born residents.
When asked in February 2024 whether immigrants are a benefit to California because of their hard work and job skills, or a burden because they use public services, 60% of Californians say immigrants are a benefit – quite a drop from the 66% in June 2023 and the 78% in February 2021.
Taking another tack, Census Bureau data shows the total Los Angeles County population decreased by 90,704 people between 2021 and 2022, half that of the previous year with residents pulling up roots to flee the economic ravages of Covid.
From 2020 to 2023, California lost half a million inhabitants, and its Department of Finance predicts Los Angeles County could lose over three times that by 2060, more than the total population in each of the eight least-populous states.
Total net domestic migration away from California between 2000 to 2022 was nearly 3.5 million, almost as many people as now live in the city of Los Angeles.
In 2008 California was projected to have almost 60 million residents by 2050; now that figure has fallen by 20 million.
Where have all the workers gone?
Can there be justice for anyone if there is not justice for all?
Although Trump is now crowing about “his” victory in the Supreme Court vacating a stay on deporting targeted Venezuelans to El Salvador, the ruling also ensures that due process must now apply.
Given certain waivers for foreign employees of businesses run by the President’s buddies have already been secured, perhaps it’s time for local governments to make the case for extenuating circumstances to protect our desperately needed workers.
In yet another sad chapter in this country’s yin-yang love story with immigration:
Does Los Angeles need construction laborers, and rural California fieldhands? Or just more depredation of their workforces through the Trump-magnified unjust numbers of deportees?
"Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
Adiós mis amigos, Jesús y María..."
"You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be deportees."
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno who now resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
