No, it was not illegal! I am probably your age and I grew up in California too, in fact, in farm country. As a teenager and in college I worked picking various crops. The braceros absolutely were not here illegally, they had work permits to come here during the growing season and went home in the fall and winter. Whole families would pile into their old but very well cared for trucks, and legally come across the border to work. With the entire family working, with elderly grandmothers taking care of the babies, they actually made quite a tidy bit of money. Enough to give them a nice standard of living in their little villages in Mexico. Indeed, they did not want to stay here in the winter, it was expensive and it was cold! They were given social security cards and the farmers were required to pay into social security for them, and there were certain other safety and financial conditions the state required of the farmers employing these Mexican laborers. When they (the braceros) reached retirement age, they were able to draw their social security benefits in Mexico. It was all legal and above board, a program that worked well for many years. It was governor Jerry Brown who ended the bracero program because he said he wanted Americans to have those jobs. Problem was, not enough Americans wanted those jobs, and the farmers were put in a pretty bad position, it was then the illegal invasion began in earnest. Jerry Brown’s stupidity, I think, may have had a lot to do with keeping the rural areas of California solidly Republican. If the Mexican workers were successfully able to get over the border, they just stayed rather than trying to go back home. Jerry Brown did this during his first term as governor, by the way (about 1975.)
We had many crews picking for us in the Dinuba area of grapes, oranges, plums, peaches,and a lot more. The lettuce in Delano and Tipton, the tomatoes further north going after Sacramento. And some were housed on our property.
You miss what I was saying. I didn’t say they stayed like today. I said they crossed the border and remained in the state throughout the year and left after the Washington navels were picked in late October to late November. Their kids used health and school benefits like education and meals without paying taxes. They used the roadways and had accidents without anything to pay anyone if they were at fault. What kids didn’t go to school were used in the fields to do things like tray grapes for raisins when the parents picked and dropped them. And they were paid by the tray not by poundage or lugs. They didn’t make a lot of money, but they were making better than what they had in Mexico. So when they bailed out at the end of season, they did pretty well south of the border. But they were back the following year to take advantage of California’s averting their eyes for the cheap labor they were getting.
rwood