Mexican/U.S. Immigration policy prior to the great depression

Diplomatic History

Volumn 31, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 207-225

  Aguila, Jaime R ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33947357658     PISSN: 01452096     EISSN: 14677709     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7709.2007.00612.x     Document Type: Article

References (72)

1. Memorandum from the San Antonio District Director of the U.S. Department of Labor - Immigration Office to the Commissioner General of Immigration, 3 August 1925, in Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Series A, Subject Correspondence Files, pt. 2,
2. Mexican Immigration, 1906-1930, ed. Alan Kraut (Bethesda, MD, 1993, microfilm) (hereafter cited as Records of the INS followed by reel number and frame), reel 15, f. 23.
3. Memorandum for the Commissioner General of Immigration, 19 February 1924, in ibid., reel 3, f. 540-41.
4. Ibid.
5. On 6 June 2006, I participated in a binational meeting in Presidio, Texas, whose sister border city is Ojinaga, Chihuahua. The Mexican consul in Presidio and the U.S. deputy consul from Ciudad Jurez cohosted this gathering. Other official participants from both nations included customs, city managers, border patrol, local law enforcement, and regional universities. All participants agreed that there was a significant lack of comprehension about the complexity of issues related to immigration on the part of both nations' federal governments.
6. Michael J. Hogan, "SHAFR Presidential Address: The 'Next Big Thing': The Future of Diplomatic History in a Global Age," Diplomatic History 28, no. 1 (2004): 1.
7. For a recent example of this line of scholarship, refer to Gilbert G. Gonzalez, Mexican Consuls and Labor Organizing: Imperial Politics in the American Southwest (Austin, TX, 1999).
8. For example, see Elliott Robert Barkan, And Still They Come: Immigrants and American Society, 1920 to the 1990s (Wheeling, IL, 1996).
9. On 2 October 1876, Minister of Foreign Relations Ignacio Vallarta reminded all consular personnel stationed along the border that their duties included the protection of their compatriots in the United States. Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (hereafter cited as AHSRE), 2-1-1785, in Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Protección Consular a Mexicanos en los Estados Unidos, 1849-1900 (Mexico City, 1989), 137-38.
10. For a historical overview of this process, see Chapter 2 of Douglas S. Massey et al., Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration (New York, 2003).
11. Robert R. Alvarez, Jr., "The Mexican-United States Border: The Making of an Anthropology of Borderlands," Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1995): 447-70.
12. Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Memoria de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores de Agosto de 1928 a Julio de 1929 (Mexico City, 1929), 1549-50.
13. William Dawson, American Consul General, "Review of Mexican Department of Migration Report entitled 'The Mexican Migration Service in Mexico,' and Discussing Mexican Migration to and from the United States," 25 October 1929, in Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Mexico, 1910-1929 (Washington, DC, 1959, microfilm), (hereafter cited as Records of the Department of State), reel 204, f. 355.
14. Francisco E. Balderrama, "México de Afuera y los Consulados Mexicanos, 1900-1940," Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Polticas y Sociales 27 (1981) 104-5: 176.
15. Manuel Gamio, Mexican Immigration to the United States: A Study of Human Migration and Adjustment (New York, 1971), 8.
16. Ibid.
17. Ministry of Foreign Relations, Chapter 4, Article 18 of the 1923 Ley Organica del Cuerpo Consular Mexicano, AHSRE, 14-25-4.
18. For example, in 1917, many chambers of commerce throughout the U.S. Southwest feared that the exodus of braceros and their families returning to Mexico for fear of the military draft would cause "a serious blow to farmers of the border states." William P. Blocker, American Vice Consul in Piedras Negras, Coahuila to the Secretary of State, 14 May 1917, Records of the Department of State, reel 203, f. 927-30.
19. W. E. Keller, President of the International League of Cotton Growers of West Los Angeles to the President of Mexico, 19 October 1920, Archivo General de la Nación, Ramo Departamento de Trabajo, 217-26-3. Such requests for labor to government officials, especially the president of Mexico, were common and can be found throughout this branch of the Mexican National Archives and the presidential branches of this era.
20. Manuel Gamio, "Preliminary Report on Mexican Immigration in the United States," unpublished report to the Social Science Research Council, 1926, 27-29
21. Juan L. Gonzales, Jr., Mexican and Mexican American Farm Workers: The California Agricultural Industry (New York, 1985), 3-15, passim.
22. Mercedes Carreras de Velasco, Los Mexicanos que Devolvio la Crisis, 1929-1932 (Mexico City, 1974), 173-74.
23. Dawson, "Review of Mexican Department of Migration Report."
24. In 1891, Congress established exclusive federal control over immigration with the creation of the superintendent of the Immigration Office within the Treasury; in Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and the Immigrants since 1882 (New York, 2004), 29.
25. William S. Bernard, ed., "The Quota System and Its Effects," in American Immigration Policy: A Reprisal, eds. William S. Bernard, Carolyn Zeleny, and Henry Miller (New York, 1950), 22.
26. For an excellent description regarding the evolution of U.S. immigration legislation, see Vernon M. Briggs, Jr., Immigration Policy and the American Labor Force (Baltimore, 1984).
27. Lawrence A. Cardoso, "La Repatriación de Braceros en Época de Obregón, 1920-1923," Historia Mexicana 26 (1977): 581-82.
28. Secretary of Labor, Ninth Annual Report of the Secretary of Labor, 67th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, DC, 1921), 28.
29. Detroit Consul to Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 27 December 1921, AHSRE, 17-17-275.
30. Keith R. Johnson, "Los Olvidados: Images of the Immigrant, Political Power of Noncitizens, and Immigration Law and Enforcement," Brigham Young University Law Review (1993) 4, 10.
31. Ibid., 11.
32. Berta Ulloa, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana: La Constitución de 1917, 2d ed. (Mexico City, 1988), 325.
33. El Universal, 21 September 1917.
34. Ignacio Bonillas, Mexican Ambassador to the United States to C. Andrés García, Consul Inspector General in El Paso, Texas, 7 September 1917, AHSRE, 13-14-3.
35. Luis G. Zorrilla, Historia de las Relaciones Entre México y los Estados Unidos de America, 1800-1958 (Mexico City, 1966), 354-55.
36. Moisés González Navarro, Los Extranjeros en México y los Mexicanos en el Extranjero, 1821-1970 (Mexico City, 1994), III: 242.
37. Cardoso, "La Repatriación de Braceros," 589.
38. Gonzacute;lez Navarro, Los Extranjeros en México, 242.
39. Linda B. Hall, "Alvaro Obregón and Mexican Migrant Labor to the United States, 1920-1924," in La Ciudad y el Campo en la Historia de México: Memoria de la VII Reunión de Historiadores Mexicanos y Noreteamericanos, eds. Ricardo Sanchez, Eric Van Young, and Gisela Von Wobeser (Oaxaca, 1992), 764.
40. E. R. Cockrell to Alvaro Obregón, 18 May 1921, Archivo General de la Nación, Ramo Obregón-Calles (hereafter cited as AGN-OC followed by volume and the expediente number), vol. 822, exp. M-1.
41. Hall, "Alvaro Obregón and Mexican Migrant Labor," 763; Government Report to President Obregón, 10 June 1922, AGN-OC, vol. 711, exp. M-30; Informes de las Repatriaciones Autorizadas en el Més de Enero de 1922, AHSRE, 36-16-318.
42. Manuel Gamio, Quantitative Estimates: Sources and Distribution of Mexican Immigration into the United States (Mexico City, 1930), Table III.
43. Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez, Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s, rev. ed. (Albuquerque, NM, 2006).
44. Ibid.; Balderrama, "México de Afuera," 179.
45. Cardoso, "La Repatriación de Braceros," 589-91.
46. Jesú Franco, El Alma de la Raza. Narraciones Históricas de Episodios y la Vida de los Mexicanos Residentes in los Estados Unidos del Norte América: La Repatriación. La Vida y Origen de las Comisiones Honoríficas Mexicanas y la Cruz Azul Mexicana (El Paso, TX, 1923), 7.
47. Memorandum from Mexican Consul in Phoenix, Arizona, Renato Cantú Lara to Consul General in El Paso, Texas, 29 December 1931, AHSRE, IV-339-23.
48. Consular Circulares, 13 January 1922, AHSRE Tomo, 3, 1922-1925 and Laredo, Texas Consul General to SRE, 12 April 1922, AHSRE, 7-2-15.
49. Franco was the prototypical loyal expatriate whom officials sought to mobilize for the benefit of their compatriots and the nation. As an educated member of the middle class, he understood both the needs of his people and his own responsibilities toward them.
50. Franco, El Alma de la Raza, 9-10.
51. Jean Meyer, "Revolution and Reconstruction in the 1920s," in Mexico since Independence, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge, England, 1992), 212.
52. Josefina Zoraida Vázquez and Lorenzo Meyer, The United States and Mexico (Chicago, 1987), 135.
53. Diario de los Debates de la Cámara de Diputados, 1 September 1925, in González Navarro, Los Extranjeros en México, III: 32-33.
54. Boletín Comercial, 10 April 1925.
55. Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, La Immigración y Protección de Mexicanos en el Extranjero (Mexico City, 1928), 33.
56. Aurora Gómez-Galvarriato, "Measuring the Impact of Institutional Change in Capital-Labor Relations in the Mexican Textile Industry, 1900-1930," in The Mexican Economy, 1870-1930: Essays on the Economic History of Institutions, Revolution, and Growth, eds. Jeffrey Bortz and Stephen Haber (Stanford, CA, 2002), 301-2.
57. Ibid., 302.
58. La Opinion, 12 October 1926.
59. Letter from Sidney Levine to Plutarco Elías Calles, 25 April 1928 (Presidential Correspondence File) AGN-OC, vol. 104, exp. M-15.
60. Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, La Immigración y Protección de Mexicanos en el Extranjero, 33.
61. Memorandum from American Vice Consul in Saltillo, Coahuila to the Secretary of State, Washington, DC, 15 April 1925, Records of the Department of State, reel 203, f. 1084.
62. Secretaría de Gobernación, Ley de Migración de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos (Mexico City, 1926), Article 17.
63. Ibid., Articles 14-15.
64. Ibid.
65. Circular to All Mexican Consuls in the United States of America, no. 5, 1917, AHSRE, 13-14-3. In one unusual case that occurred in New York City, Magdeleno Flores Massena was granted U.S. citizenship and then drafted. He complained to the New York consul general that he did not want to be a U.S. citizen but had failed to register with the consulate, and consequently, his citizenship status was in question. See also Carole E. Christian, "Joining the American Mainstream: Texas's Mexican Americans during World War I," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 92 (1989) 4: 570-78.
66. 26 July 1927 Circular in Circulares Consulares, Expediente 4, Años 1926-1928, Tomo 4, AHSRE.
67. November 1925 to August 1925, Communication between various U.S. agencies (Department of Labor, Department of Immigration, and their agents along the border), Records of the INS, reel 15, f. 19-226, passim.
68. "The Migration Service in Mexico," 24 October 1929, Records of the Department of State, reel 204, f. 358.
69. El Universal, 5 May 1927.
70. Ibid., and 16 April 1928.
71. Ibid., 21 May 1927.
72. Ibid., 16 May 1927.