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President Trump says he has committed to American farmers to continue admitting large numbers of H-2A foreign visa workers to take agricultural jobs, even as jobless claims are set to climb above 3.3 million in the midst of the Chinese coronavirus crisis. During a press briefing on Wednesday, Trump suggested United States farms would not survive without a continuous flow of H-2A foreign visa workers who are brought to the country by farmers. There is no limit to how many H-2A foreign visa workers can be admitted to the U.S.

With a little under a month remaining until Election Day, the Obama campaign has transitioned into full-blown hispandering mode. This week’s symbolically potent, yet empty, exercise in gestural politics entailed President Obama designating the home of former California labor leader Cesar Chavez a national monument. The ostensible purpose of this decision is to rally support among one of his party’s most reliable voting blocs, i.e. Hispanic Americans. Because even though they still decisively support the President’s reelection, that support does not always translate into votes, as other analysts have trenchantly observed. What makes Obama’s trip to California so fascinating though...

The United Farm Workers union has signed an agreement with a Mexican state to help recruit guest workers to labor on U.S. farms legally – and under union contract. "If this is something that's going to be utilized more in the future, then we've got to get in on it," UFW President Arturo Rodriguez said of the H-2A guest worker program. "We're looking for enlightened employers who are willing to sit down and do this with us." The agreement was signed in early April in the western state of Michoacan, which has a long history of migration to California and...

ESCONDIDO -- U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Solana Beach, said Thursday that he would support a guest-worker program similar to the Bracero Program that brought thousands of low-skilled laborers from Mexico starting in the 1940s and ending in the 1960s. The Bracero Program was widely criticized by human rights groups for abuses, but Bilbray said it created economic opportunities for poor Mexicans. Bilbray said migrant workers should be allowed to come to work in the United States, but should not be able to become permanent residents, nor should their children born in the country be granted U.S. citizenship. "The old Bracero...

Mexicans who toiled on U.S. farms between 1942 and 1964 under the Bracero program are ready to "besiege" U.S. President George W. Bush's ranch in Texas to press their demands for money owed them in their retirement, an activist who fought with Nicaragua's Sandinista rebels said Tuesday. José Puente León told EFE that the former braceros are determined to march on Bush's ranch just as they did last year on the ranch owned by President Vicente Fox in Guanajuato. "We're ready to besiege Bush's ranch in Crawford to press for the payment of the 9 billion pesos (US796.4 million) that...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Around 2,000 pensioners invaded the ranch of Mexican President Vicente Fox on Saturday, demanding the return of money owed to them from a World War II worker program in the United States, local media reported.It was not clear if Fox was at his ranch in the central state of Guanajuato at the time the pensioners, some riding horses, forced open fences to enter his heavily guarded property. Fox often spends weekends there resting.The protesters later left the ranch after being promised a hearing with a high-ranking government official, local media reported.The pensioners, who provided extra labor...

<p>SAN CRISTOBAL, Mexico -- Hundreds of protestors forced their way into President Vicente Fox's private ranch Saturday to demand compensation for Mexicans who worked in the United States during and after World War II.</p> <p>The crowd pushed past guards at a service entrance to the ranch, located in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, but no further violence was reported. Leaders of the protest group were allowed to enter a residence on the property to meet with members of the presidents family.</p>

<p>Matiana Perez de Valencia, 51, and her son Jesus, 14, live in Yuba City. Her late husband worked as a bracero in the 1940s and 1950s and told her he never received all the money he earned. The bracero program was instituted during World War II because of a labor shortage.</p>