TUCSON CITIZEN

January 3, 2009

EDITORIAL

Our Opinion: No justice for hardworking braceros of yesteryear

Mexican braceros who worked on American farms between 1942 and 1964 were exploited by their country's government then, and they're being exploited by the Mexican government yet again.

Like working immigrants here today, most of the farmworkers of yesteryear sent the bulk of their pay to their families back home - a trend that greatly bolstered the national income in Mexico then and still does so today.

But unbeknownst to many of the braceros, the Mexican government was withholding 10 percent of the money they sent home.

For anyone who picked crops through all 22 years of the bracero program, that 10 percent would add up to an especially tidy sum.

But no matter how long a farmworker may have labored in the U.S., far from home and family, 10 percent is 10 percent.

So in 2001, several former braceros filed suit against the Mexican government to recoup their lost pay.

In 2008, Mexico agreed to settle by paying braceros $3,500 each.

That may not be much for the longtime workers, but it's better than nothing. Or so they thought.

As it turns out, nothing is what most braceros will receive - because the Mexican government demands that the workers show pay stubs from their bracero days.

Who keeps pay stubs for 44 years, much less 66 years? Hardly anyone. And perhaps that's what our neighbor to the south was counting on when it agreed to dole out $3,500 per bracero.

Mexico wants claimants to submit their old bracero card or original work contracts, original wage stubs or Social Security records showing payments they received, as well as a Mexican passport, Mexican voting card or a Mexican military-service card.

And the deadline is Monday.

"We were ignorant back then, and they probably thought we wouldn't ask for the money they kept taking because we weren't educated," former bracero Antonio Olivares Samaniego told Tucson Citizen reporter Fernanda Echávarri this week.

"It's just not fair," he said.

He's right. It isn't. The bracero program was a boon to U.S. agriculture, providing a legal work force to help feed the population of Americans that boomed after World War II.

The program was good for many of the workers, and it helped their families and their homeland's economy as well.

The $3,500 pittance promised to them in the lawsuit settlement should not come with impossible strings attached. These workers should be compensated fairly, albeit tardily.

Shame on Mexico for treating these workers unfairly once again.