Just like the early 19th century, immigrant workers nowadays still travel hundreds of miles to find work to sustain their families economically. During the rise of urban cities there was a rapid growth of immigrants that arrived to urban areas looking for factory jobs. As the manufacturing industry started to move out of the cities and into the suburbs, the workers that were able to afford living there moved. Towards the mid-century, business corporations started to outsource and the people that were able to afford to move did so.
Today, there are global corporations in the agribusiness that use immigrants to work the fields exposing them harmful chemicals and bad living conditions along with low pay.
A lot of people throughout history have argued that immigrants negatively affect the US economy and benefits for Americans, yet statistics show differently. In chapter 5 of The New Urban Sociology book, the author explains that in the mid 19th century when people were moving to the suburbs and going from factory jobs to white collar jobs, more immigrant workers helped keep manufacturing businesses open. The city of Chicago is a perfect example of this. An immigrant wave of workers that moved to Chicago to work for these factories were from Germany, Ireland, Scandinavia, and other eastern and southern countries in Europe. Aside from factory jobs, a lot of immigrants coming from Mexico were hired to work in the agribusiness due to the fact that many of them traveled from agricultural regions in Mexico. One of the most important immigrant work programs in history was the Bracero Program that started in 1942, when the US entered World War II. This program allowed for millions of Mexican immigrants to enter the United States and work for the Farm Bureau and independent farm associations. The majority of these workers were experienced agricultural workers that traveled to the US for temporary positions. They were hired by contract and they were not to leave the country unless their employer allowed them to. They were expected to give up their permits as soon as their contract was over.
On top of discrimination, immigrant workers had (and still have) to deal with poor living conditions and low wages.
Throughout history, there’s always been a controversy about immigrant workers and how they affect the United States. Yet, new laws have been implanted to allow workers in the country when we need them.
La Espiga is a documentary film that shows the life of a immigrant workers that are hired by big commercial agricultural corporations to travel temporarily to other states and work the fields. They are promised housing, daycare if needed, and transportation to and from work. They would work from 5am to 7pm to get a certain leaf from the corn plants, if the weather permits. Immigrant workers that are hired usually bring their family along since they are promised daycare and the fact that federal law allows children from the age of 12 to work in the fields if school is out of session. When they are in school, the children are allowed to enroll in school programs nearby that allow them to attend temporarily.
This population of agricultural immigrants has declined, but still plays an important role in the agribusiness for this country.
Looking back to early history of this country, we can agree that the rise of immigrants during the urban expansion era creating more jobs and less unemployment, leading to a rapid growth of families with higher income has helped the rise in economy in this country.
Instead of looking at the conservatives’perspective, we should understand how the change of immigrant workers affected our country and start to see that immigrants from different countries is the base on which we all depend on.
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