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NPR has an August 23rd, 2018 story about the original "A-TEAM" (Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower), a 1965 project to replace migrant workers with high school kids on summer break.
The year was 1965. On Cinco de Mayo, newspapers across the country reported that Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz wanted to recruit 20,000 high schoolers to replace the hundreds of thousands of Mexican agricultural workers who had labored in the United States under the so-called Bracero Program. Started in World War II, the program was an agreement between the American and Mexican governments that brought Mexican men to pick harvests across the U.S. It ended in 1964, after years of accusations by civil rights activists like Cesar Chavez that migrants suffered wage theft and terrible working and living conditions.
But farmers complained — in words that echo today's headlines — that Mexican laborers did the jobs that Americans didn't want to do, and that the end of [the program] meant that crops would rot in the fields.
[...] the national press was immediately skeptical. "Dealing with crops which grow close to the ground requires a good deal stronger motive" than money or the prospects of a good workout, argued a Detroit Free Press editorial. "Like, for instance, gnawing hunger."
[One group] got paid minimum wage — $1.40 an hour back then — plus 5 cents for every crate filled with about 30 to 36 [melons.] [Students] worked six days a week, with Sundays off, and they were not allowed to return home during their stint. The farmers sheltered them in... "defunct housing" [according to one student].
Problems arose immediately... In California's Salinas Valley, 200 teenagers... quit after just two weeks on the job... Students elsewhere staged strikes. At the end, the A-TEAM was considered a giant failure and was never tried again.
[Stony Brook University history professor Lori A. Flores] says the A-TEAM "reveals a very important reality: It's not about work ethic [for undocumented workers]. It's about [the fact] that this labor is not meant to be done under such bad conditions and bad wages."
The kids gave up their summer vacations, worked in 110 degree heat six days a week, slept with no air conditioning, and ate subsistence rations, for nearly no benefit; it's no wonder the program was not a rousing success.
In tangentially-related news, the U.S. Libertarian Party published a press release the day before entitled "Immigrants Benefit the United States" that makes the blanket assertion "Immigrants, almost across the board, are a net value to the United States."
(Score: 3, Redundant) by SanityCheck on Friday August 24 2018, @11:21AM (15 children)
If they are so great, why don't they make their countries great?
Or is it they only work hard now because there is something in it for them, and their spawn will be just as useless as all the people back in their country.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @12:16PM (6 children)
This is very unfair.
Do you think it's a piece of cake to turn around a country with hundreds of years of history and culture? It also takes money and power to do that.
Tell me, are you mad at West Virginians who leave the holler for another state to make a living and that send money back to the relatives who stayed? The Hispanic immigrants are just doing the same thing. Poverty and violence suck.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 24 2018, @02:37PM (5 children)
Fuck unfair. Stop whining, stop making excuses, and get the job done.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @02:55PM (4 children)
Actually, those immigrants ARE getting the job done--it's just not the job you want them to do.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 24 2018, @03:39PM (3 children)
Correct. I don't want them working as tools to undermine the US economy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @03:55PM (1 child)
You need to direct your anger at those who made and continued to make this possible: the businessmen and the politicians.
Why get mad at the immigrants? I would probably do the same in their shoes.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 24 2018, @04:14PM
Let me understand this. I can be justifiably angry at the businessmen, AND the politicians, AND the illegal aliens, all at the same time. But, my anger is misdirected?
I am angry with every single congress since about 1950. When the US did it's Operation Wetback, there was no followup. There were promises THEN of immigration reform. Not one congress has actually addressed immigration reform. Each and every congress for the entire length of my life has FAILED to do it's job.
I have enough anger to go around, so don't sweat that I might waste some of it on the illegals who are actually breaking the laws of the land.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Friday August 24 2018, @07:04PM
Their cheap labor helps the US economy.
The US citizens ? Maybe not quite as much. But many people profit from cheap hands, and that slows down the outsourcing, saving whole towns in the process.
Shades of dark grey...
I'm pretty sure most Latin America immigrants would really love to see the US stop using drugs and actively undermining any socialist-leaning government. That won't solve all of their problems, but it would dramatically reduce the numbers heading north.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @12:22PM
It's always a gamble as to how the next generation turns out.
If they are born in the US, they are automatically citizens, so they can access all services, join the military (which many do), and attend college.
They will speak and write English well too.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Whoever on Friday August 24 2018, @02:57PM
Because it only takes a small number of assholes in a country to make it terrible. Think Trump, Koch Brothers, etc.. Or if you don't like that, how many Assads or Hitlers does it take to make a country an objectively bad place to live?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday August 24 2018, @03:06PM (5 children)
There's a serious answer to your rhetorical question: When they've tried to do that, the US had made sure they fail. As General Smedley Butler, USMC, explained later in his life:
"I spent 33 years and four months in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force -the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from a second lieutenant to a major general. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. Thus I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914, I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. During those years I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotion. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents."
The US has both historically and recently made things abundantly clear to the people of Latin America: If you elect the "wrong" people that are trying to make life good for their citizens than international business interests, we'll make sure that things get much worse for your country. Common US tactics for making things get much worse include but are not limited to: Military coups, death squads, starting civil wars, training torturers, and military invasions.
Look into the history of these countries and you'll see that all of those have happened in most of those countries many many times. And that's why those countries are, in the words of the POTUS, "shithole countries".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @03:45PM (4 children)
While your comment is true, I would say that sort of behavior from the US hasn't happened since 1990.
Those happened during the US era of "colonialism" and the Cold War.
Since 1990 we have been in the era of "globalism" without US hegemony.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @03:58PM
Correction: "Imperialist" is a less confusing term than "colonial".
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday August 24 2018, @04:07PM (2 children)
Since 1990, the US has:
- Forced Haiti to change its government, twice (in 1995, and 2004)
- Fought in the now-sorta-finished civil war in Columbia
- Backed Mexico's government against the Zapatista Rebellion against NAFTA in 1994
- Backed and quite possibly were directly involved in the 2004 coup attempt against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela
- Backed an attempted coup against Rafael Correa in Ecuador in 2010
- Been part of organizing the ouster of Dilma Rousseff in Brazil before her term was up
And that's just some of the stuff we know about. More recently, the US government has been deafeningly silent about hundreds of people being rounded up and disappeared in Nicaragua over the last few months.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @04:59PM (1 child)
Let me clarify then and say, "The worst is over."
;-)
I don't agree with some of your examples because those were where the US extended aid to a govt in putting down a guerrilla war.
I don't think too many Colombians for example had a soft spot for the FARC in the past 20 yrs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @05:38AM
Those same Colombians might not appreciate the US adding fuel - or carcinogenic herbicides - to the mix.