Mexican Immigration Essay

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During the 1900’s through 1950’s the United States experienced an influx of immigrants coming in from Mexico seeking employment opportunities, as many of them wanted to avoid the Mexican Revolution occurring from 1910 to 1920. Methods for arriving in the United States varied for each individual’s preference of the destination, but the means of transportation had been constant throughout. These methods of transportation consisted of contractors seeking unskilled workers willing to partake in hard labor in steel, railroad, or agriculture companies. Contractors traveled to towns close to Mexico’s boarder such as Laredo or El Paso seeking Mexicans citizens for labors. In some instances, immigrants traveled on their own will based on the advice …show more content…

Mexican immigrants working in the United States experienced a great increase of wage distribution in comparison to the wage earnings being obtained in Mexico, but these immigrants confronted numerous issues in their working and living environments such as discrimination, segregation, and unjust rent charge. Mexican immigrants endured much hardship in their working environment, often being regulated to the most dangerous tasks by their employers. These low level positions had been tasked with back breaking work. Some of these hardships, however, varied based on the location Mexican immigrants had been living in during this time period. Work security and wage distribution varied from different locations as well as rental rates. In addition, Mexican immigrant’s race classification varied from location to location causing unfair representation or discriminatory treatments. Although multiple of Mexican immigrants coming into the United States benefited economically due to higher wages, Mexican immigrants still encountered a different degree of adversity formed by the geographical position of …show more content…

Texas vagrancy laws interdicted Mexican immigrants from changing their place of employment causing individuals to stay in low level positions or face the probability of deportation. Although discrimination had been present in the working environment, auto industries in Detroit such as Ford Motor Company had racial hostility minimized by the unwritten policy of segregation for autoworkers. Discrimination in the work force had been very much different depending on the location. Advances to skilled jobs had been a troublesome issue many Mexican immigrants faced because the inability to understand the English language as well as racial prejudice. Discrimination issues had not only been limited to the work force, but also towards the living facilities for many of these immigrants. Mexican immigrants had been confined to live in unsound buildings. The rent charged to these immigrants at times had been unfairly billed. As Mark Reisler states that in Chicago, Illinois “rents charged to Mexicans and blacks were generally higher that those by other immigrants for comparable or even superior

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