the bracero program

After I read the article about Latinos in U.S. society, I clicked on a link to a picture on the right of the page. This picture shows 5 young children posing under a sign that says "US Department of Agriculture Farm Security Administration Farm Workers Community". These are the children of migrant farm workers brought in from Mexico to provide agricultural workers in the Southwest during the late 1940s. This angers me because even though this was a good thing for the growers because the Mexicans provided cheap, unorganized labor, it was not beneficial in any way to the workers. The people that were brought over were paid low wages, forced to live in horrible conditions, and did not recieve schooling for their children. It maddens me to hear the way that immigrants were treated when they came to the U.S. because Americans think of themselves as loving and accepting beings, but in reality are cold-hearted, and afraid of anything or anyone that is remotely different than them. These children, being as young as they were, probably did not understand why people were so mean to them, and probably thought that it was something they did. We know from studying African Americans during first semester that this can have a degrading and lasting effect on the children and their futures. As one of the leading countries today, we need to take a look at what our ancestors did and how they acted, and learn NOT to do what they did. We need to learn from their mistakes.