Migratory Movements between Mexico and the United States, 1880–1934

Author(s):  
Alanís Enciso Fernando Saúl ◽  
Russ Davidson

This chapter presents an overview of the flow of Mexican immigration to the United States between the years of 1880 and 1934. It notes that two main factors were responsible for the influx of Mexican immigrants to the United States over this period of time, these being: 1) the expansion of the U.S. economy and integration of the southwestern states into the union, and 2) the difficult social and economic conditions that Mexico faced as a result of the expropriation of village communal lands and a decrease in wages on rural estates. This chapter also outlines the timeline of Mexican immigration throughout this period, from the late 19th to the middle of the 20th century, and analyses how momentous events, such as World War I and the Great Depression, spurred or deterred Mexican migration to the U.S., as well as the Mexican government’s various attempts to both encourage and curb repatriation.

Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith ◽  
James K. Galbraith

This chapter examines the lessons of World War II with respect to money and monetary policy. World War I exposed the fragility of the monetary structure that had gold as its foundation, the great boom of the 1920s showed how futile monetary policy was as an instrument of restraint, and the Great Depression highlighted the ineffectuality of monetary policy for rescuing the country from a slump—for breaking out of the underemployment equilibrium once this had been fully and firmly established. On the part of John Maynard Keynes, the lesson was that only fiscal policy ensured not just that money was available to be borrowed but that it would be borrowed and would be spent. The chapter considers the experiences of Britain, Germany, and the United States with a lesson of World War II: that general measures for restraining demand do not prevent inflation in an economy that is operating at or near capacity.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth McKillen

One of the pervasive myths about the United States is that it has never had a socialist movement comparable to other industrialized nations. Yet in the early 20th century a vibrant Socialist Party and socialist movement flourished in the United States. Created in 1901, the Socialist Party of America unsurprisingly declared its primary goal to be the collectivization of the means of production. Yet the party’s highly decentralized and democratic structure enabled it to adapt to the needs and cultures of diverse constituencies in different regions of the country. Among those attracted to the movement in its heyday were immigrant and native-born workers and their families, tenant farmers, middle-class intellectuals, socially conscious millionaires, urban reformers, and feminists. Party platforms regularly included the reform interests of these groups as well as the long-term goal of eradicating capitalism. By 1912, the Socialist Party boasted an impressive record of electoral successes at the local, state, and national levels. U.S. Socialists could also point with pride to over three hundred English and foreign-language Socialist periodicals, some with subscription rates that rivaled those of the major urban daily newspapers. Yet Socialists faced numerous challenges in their efforts to build a viable third-party movement in the United States. On the one hand, progressive reformers in the Democratic and Republican parties sought to coopt Socialists. On the other hand, the Socialist Party encountered challenges on the left from anarchists, syndicalists, communists, and Farmer-Labor Party activists. The Socialist Party was particularly weakened by government repression during World War I, by the postwar Red Scare, and by a communist insurgency within its ranks in the aftermath of the war. By the onset of the Great Depression, the Communist Party would displace the Socialist Party as the leading voice of radical change in the United States.


This essay is a response to Guillermo Ibarra’s contribution to this book, Global Perspectives on the United States. It argues that Ibarra’s essay can usefully remind readers of the many ways the U.S. and Latin America are connected. While Ibarra highlights the transnational nature of U.S. cities and how Mexican immigrants in the U.S. remain tied to communities in their home country while simultaneously embracing largely positive views of the U.S., Spellacy wants to situate Ibarra’s project in relation to scholarly and artistic works that conceive of the Americas as a space joined by historical ties and the continued traffic of people, ideas, commodities, and culture across national borders. Spellacy asks how a hemispheric understanding of the Americas could help us comprehend the new form of citizenship embraced by Mexican immigrants considered in Ibarra’s essay, and she suggests that it might be fruitful to think across disciplinary divides and consider these questions in relation to scholars working on hemispheric cultural studies. For example, she asks, if citizenship is performed rather than taken for granted, is it not important to consider the role culture plays in this process?


2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Elliot Brownlee

The essay explores how ideas about social justice and economic performance shaped the debates over federal taxation in the United States since the origins of the republic. The debates were most intense during major national emergencies (the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II), and each debate produced a new tax regime-a tax system with its own characteristic tax base, rate structure, administration apparatus, and social purpose. The criterion of "ability to pay" and a concern for economic efficiency powerfully shaped the formation of every tax regime, but "ability to pay" became the more influential of the two considerations during the national crises of the twentieth century.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rana Basam Khan ◽  
◽  
Muhammad Nawaz Bhatti ◽  
Ghulam Mustafa ◽  
◽  
...  

It has been decades since legislative issues have thought about social, defense, and compassionate issues of migration which has become a touchstone in U.S strategy discussion. Mexican migration to the U.S started in 1848. It has proceeded to the present with no critical interference, something that makes this work movement very particular as a basic segment of the American work advertise. Generally started with enormous development, driven by starvation, political problems, open doors in the U.S; that point eased back, tightened, or unexpectedly finished, from 1850 to 1882, similar to the case of the Chinese. The details show that Mexico is a key source of settlers in U.S and has long been a major source of enemy contact with refugees, but so many have been focusing on Mexico and not the other countries which have also become major sources of illegal immigrants. The United States and Mexico are bordered with California, San Diego, and Baja California, Tijuana, and the Pacific Ocean. The boundary stretches eastward to El Paso, Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, Texas, on the Rio Grande. From that point the border continues south-east along the Rio Grande River until the end of it in the Gulf of Mexico. Border stretching of over 1945 miles is insufficiently regulated. Only old solid markers, rusty safety clasp and spoiled dry fence posts can be found in many parts of the place, and the river Grande that over the centuries has continuously changed its course separating both nations. U.S endeavors to control passages and exit adequately have been focused principally along the most profoundly dealt transit courses driving to north. U.S. powerlessness to control all the Mexican boundary has proven that any Mexican involved in operating in the U.S seldom discovers that the frontier is an unlikely trap Through the span of the most recent 170 years, Mexican migrants have to a great extent worked in horticulture, farming, mining, and railroad development.


Author(s):  
Alanís Enciso Fernando Saúl ◽  
Russ Davidson

This chapter concludes Enciso’s exploration of the Mexican government’s attempts to repatriate its citizens, as well as its 1939 decision to end its official plan for organized repatriation. This chapter also explores how the official end of the repatriation plan impacted immigration and deportation measures in the U.S., as well as how the threat of a mass deportation once again spurred the Cardenas administration to announce plans to repatriate 1,000 Mexican nationals each month. Chapter 8 also notes the impact that the United States’ war effort had on migration and repatriation levels, as well as concludes that the Mexican government’s struggle to successfully repatriate its citizens during the Great Depression has greatly impacted the attitude and policies of both Mexico and the U.S. concerning immigration today.


Unwanted ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 71-97
Author(s):  
Maddalena Marinari

Chapter 3 examines how Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates adjusted to the new restrictive immigration regime that followed the passage of the 1924 act and how they worked to build political clout to push for reform under the aegis of Roosevelt’s New Deal. During this period, family reunification remained the only argument that helped them gain some traction with legislators as both groups gained more political visibility with representation at every level of government. Despite the pervasive isolationism, push for assimilation, and the strain from the Great Depression, Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates successfully used family reunification to help more migrants enter the United States as the 1930s came to an end. Those who could not enter often resorted to illegal immigration. The Anti-Semitism that animated many officers in the U.S. State Department, however, made sure that the very generous annual quota for Germany went mostly unfilled for the entire decade even as thousands of German Jews continued to apply for visas for the United States to flee Nazi Germany.


2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 567-569
Author(s):  
Louis DeSipio

The provocative question raised by Rogers Smith's “Living in a Promiseland? Mexican Immigration and American Obligations” is whether the tortured history of U.S.-Mexican relations and the racialized context of Mexican immigrant reception can best be ameliorated through targeted immigration policies that would create added opportunities for Mexican migrants relative to others. I argue that the current, more universally-principled system of U.S. immigration policy, supplemented by an inclusive legalization program, can better serve the needs of potential Mexican migrants and Mexican immigrants resident in the United States. Also, I am more skeptical than Smith is about the depths of Mexico's commitment to seeking binational strategies to address the needs of its émigrés abroad.


Ad Americam ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 67-82
Author(s):  
Anna Wyrwisz

The United States had developed trade relations with the Dutch East Indies before World War I. In the 1920s, American diplomatic services prepared reports on the economic and political situation in the Dutch colony. The U.S. wanted to defend their interests in the region. In 1949, after several years of attempts to regain power in Indonesia, the Dutch withdrew in the absence of American support. A decade later, suchlike events occurred in connection with Dutch New Guinea.


2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-190
Author(s):  
Benjamin W. Barrett ◽  
T. Elizabeth Durden

Data from 154 different Mexican communities, housed within the Mexican Migration Project (mmp), is used to explore the influence of U.S. assimilation on a Mexican migrant’s propensity to remit money back to Mexico. A migrant opening a U.S. bank account is employed as a proxy for assimilation. Sociodemographic, U.S. migration, and Mexican community control variables are included. It is found that a migrant opening a bank account during the last U.S. migration is associated with a reduced probability of remitting money back to Mexico, suggesting a shift in social and economic activity from Mexico to the U.S. for migrants abroad. Los datos de 154 comunidades mexicanas, agrupados en el Mexican Migration Project (mmp), se utilizan para explorar la influencia de la asimilación a Estados Unidos sobre los migrantes mexicanos, tomando en cuenta su propensión a enviar remesas de vuelta a México. La apertura de una cuenta bancaria en Estados Unidos por parte de un migrante se emplea como una forma subsidiaria de asimilación. Se incluyen variables sociodemográficas, de migración a Estados Unidos y de control de las comunidades mexicanas. Los hallazgos dicen que la apertura de una cuenta bancaria por parte de un migrante durante la última ola de migración a Estados Unidos se asocia a una menor probabilidad de enviar remesas de vuelta a México, lo cual sugiere un cambio en la actividad social y económica de México hacia Estados Unidos por parte de los migrantes en el extranjero.


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