The Mexican Repatriation was the repatriation, deportation, and expulsion of Mexicans and Mexican Americans from the United States during the Great Depression between 1929 and 1939.[1][2][3] Estimates of how many were repatriated, deported, or expelled range from 300,000 to 2 million (of which 40–60% were citizens of the United States, overwhelmingly children).[4]: fn 20 [5][6]: 330 [7][8]: xiii [6]: 150
Repatriation was supported by the federal government but actual deportation and repatriations were largely organized and encouraged by city and state governments, often with support from local private entities. However, voluntary repatriation was far more common than formal deportation and federal officials were minimally involved.[5] Some of the repatriates hoped that they could escape the economic crisis of the Great Depression.[9] The government formally deported at least 82,000 people,[10] with the vast majority occurring between 1930 and 1933.[5][11] The Mexican government also encouraged repatriation with the promise of free land.[8][12]: 185–186
Some scholars contend that the unprecedented number of deportations between 1929 and 1933 were part of a policy by the administration of Herbert Hoover who had scapegoated Mexicans for the Great Depression and instituted stricter immigration policies with the stated intent of freeing up jobs for Americans.[5] The vast majority of formal deportations happened between 1930 and 1933 as part of Hoover's policy first mentioned in his 1930 State of the Union Address.[5] After Franklin D. Roosevelt became president, both formal and voluntary rate of deportation reduced for all immigrants, including Mexicans.[5] The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration also instituted more lenient policies towards Mexican immigrants.[5] Widely scapegoated for exacerbating the overall economic downturn of the Great Depression, many Mexicans lost their jobs.[13] Mexicans were further targeted because of "the proximity of the Mexican border, the physical distinctiveness of mestizos, and easily identifiable barrios."[14]
Estimates of the number who moved to Mexico between 1929 and 1939 range from 300,000 and 2 million,[5] with most estimates placing the number at between 500,000 and 1 million.[10] The highest estimate comes from Mexican media reports at the time.[6]: 150 The vast majority of repatriation occurred in the early 1930s with the peak year in 1931.[12]: 49 It is estimated that there were 1,692,000 people of Mexican origin in the US in 1930, which was reduced to 1,592,000 in 1940.[5] Up to one-third of all Mexicans in the US were repatriated by 1934.[14]
With the U.S. victory in the Mexican–American War, the Gadsden Purchase, and the annexation of the Republic of Texas, much of the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Texas, Colorado, and Wyoming, were ceded to the United States.[10] This land was roughly half of Mexico's pre-war territory.[15][16][17][18]
80,000-100,000 Mexican citizens lived in this territory, and were promised U.S. citizenship under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican–American War.[10][19][17][18] About 3,000 decided to move to Mexican territory.[10][17][20] Mexicans who remained in the U.S. were considered U.S. citizens and were counted as "white" by the U.S. census until 1930, but a growing influx of immigrants combined with local racism led to the creation of a new category in the census of that year.[21][22]
Mexican emigration to the United States was not significant until the construction of the railroad network between Mexico and the Southwest, which provided employment and eased transit.[8]: 6–7 Increasing demands for agricultural labor, and the violence and economic disruption of the Mexican Revolution, also caused many to flee Mexico during the years of 1910–1920[8]: 8–9 [23] and again during the Cristero War in the late 1920s.[24][25][6]: 15 [26][25][27][28][29][30] During the 1920s, the highest number of Mexican immigrants to the United States traveled from the Mexican states of Jalisco, Michoacán, and Guanajuato.[31][25][32][33][34][35]
Records indicate that between the years of 1901 to 1920, 200,000 unlawful Mexican immigrants settled in the country.[5] A study done by Gratton and Merchant indicates that approximately 500,000 Mexicans entered the United States during the 1920s and pre-repatriation era, per US records.[5] At the same time, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a group of Mexican and African immigrants facing racial discrimination and persecution by the city officials [36][37][38] was expelled from the town.
American employers often encouraged such emigration from Mexico into the United States.[39] At the onset of the 20th century, "U.S. employers went so far as to make requests directly to the president of Mexico to send more labor into the United States" and hired "aggressive labor recruiters who work outside the parameters of the U.S." in order to recruit Mexican labor for jobs in industry, railroads, meatpacking, steel mills, and agriculture, including in Texas as farm laborers and in California's cotton industry.[40][41][42][4][39][43] This led to the existence of Mexican communities outside of the Southwest, in places such as Indiana,[44][45][46][47]Michigan,[48] Nebraska,[49] Minnesota,[50][51] Tennessee[52][53][54][55][42] and Pennsylvania to work in the steel industry of Illinois in Chicago and in the coal mines of West Virginia.[56][57][58][59] Mexicans immigrated to states such as North Carolina, Wisconsin and Louisiana during the early 20th century.[52][60] As a Chicago-based steel company, The Inland Steel Company provided a substantial portion of its jobs to Mexicans, adding up to 18 percent of its total workforce.[61][62] Additional immigrants went to Oregon, Idaho and Washington as farm labors and Colorado to work in the sugar beet industry.[63][64][42][65] and the steel industry in Pueblo,Colorado[66]
These large inflows of immigrants raised concerns quickly among legislatures and committees.[61][67] Representatives of Texas' agricultural industry shared with a committee that some immigrants were bringing their families with them during their journey to the United States. These growers reported that 30 percent of workers brought their families.[61][67][68]
These early waves of immigration also led to waves of repatriation, generally tied to economic downturns. During the depression of 1907, the Mexican government allocated funds to repatriate some Mexicans living in the United States.[10] Similarly, in the depression of 1920–21, the US government was advised to deport Mexicans to "relieve ... benevolence agencies of the burden of helping braceros and their families."[4]: 213 While some sources report up to 150,000 repatriations during this period,[4]: 216 Mexican and US records conflict as to whether emigration from the US to Mexico increased in 1921, and only a limited number of formal deportations were recorded.[4] : 211, 214
Immigration from Mexico was not formally regulated until the Immigration Act of 1917,[4]: 213 but enforcement was lax and many exceptions were given for employers.[8]: 9, 11, 13 In 1924, with the establishment of the U.S. Border Patrol, enforcement became more strict,[69][8]: 11, 13 [6]: 10–11 and in the late 1920s before the market crash, as part of a general anti-immigrant sentiment, enforcement was again tightened.[8]: 30–33 [70][71] A period of heightened Nativism and the Passage of the Immigration Act of 1924[72] contributed to anti immigrant polices [72][73][74][39][75]
Due to the lax immigration enforcement, and porousness of the border, many citizens, legal residents, and immigrants did not have the official documentation proving their citizenship, had lost their documents, or just never applied for citizenship.[6]: 24 [29][75][76] Prejudice played a factor: Mexicans were stereotyped as "unclean, improvident, indolent, and innately dull",[8]: 23 [77] so many Mexicans did not apply for citizenship because they "knew that if [they] became a citizen [they] would still be, in the eyes of the Anglos, a Mexican".[8]: 20
Large numbers of Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans were repatriated during the early 1930s. This followed the Wall Street crash of 1929, and resulting growth in poverty and nativist sentiment, exemplified by President Herbert Hoover's call for deportation[6]: 4, 74–75 and a series on the racial inferiority of Mexicans run by the Saturday Evening Post.[14][44]: fn 14 Voluntary repatriation was much more common during the process than formal deportation was.[10][5]
