I agree with that. However, during that period of our history we did not have thousands entering this country illegally every week. I don't think they would have put up with that in the 1940s, during wartime. Do you?
Alas, you would be incorrect, sir. According to this site:
The onset of World War II led Mexican migration to rebound, as Uncle Sam again faced a domestic labor shortage. Corporate recruiters flocked across the border afresh, looking for temporary farm workers, and Washington, D.C. and Mexico City searched for creative solutions to the lack of workers. These efforts culminated in the Emergency Farm Labor Act of 1942--better known as the bracero program.Under the bracero program U.S. officials could hire Mexican workers selected by the Mexican government and then, after guaranteeing transportation and a minimum wage, subcontract them to major agricultural interests. By the late 1950s, more than 400,000 seasonal braceros--the word is derived from the Spanish brazo, or "arm"--toiled legally on farms and orchards in Texas and other states. Their vulnerability to abuse by employers troubled the Mexican government, but the money they sent home was sufficiently valuable to their nation's economy that the program continued until 1964, when the American civil rights and farm worker movements, as well as the continuing mechanization of harvests, led Washington, D.C., to unilaterally call it off.
Interestingly, the program looks quite similar to the guest worker program proposed by the Bush Administration.