9
SOCIAL JUSTICE
Д8Ш
FOPFIGtJ; CONTRACT LABOR
A Statement of Opinion and Conscience.
Roughly half a million men are annually imported to the United States to
perform agricultural labor under snort-term contracts. These men come from
Hexieo, the Philippines, Japer, Canada, Puerto Bico, and several islands of the
British Keat Indies* In view of the number of souls involved, and the widely
ramifying implications and side-effects of these foreign contract labor programs,
it is incumbent upon every citisen of this country to inform himself of the issues,
to arrive at a set of considered opinions, and to take such action as is consistent
with his opinions.
The discussion here will be concerned with the first, and by far the largest,
of our nation’s foreign labor* programs: that which involves Mexican Nationals,
often called braceros . We shall be concerned particularly with brae
его
s in
California, which, Xn terms of man-months, is the largest user
оТ^ЖвГХуре
of
labor. Host of what is -aid here, however, may be applied with few modifications
to the bracer
о
program as it operates in other States, and Ind&ed to this country vs
other foreign contract labor programs as well.
The present discussion will ha-re a great deal to do with value judgments.
Frequent use trill be made of terms such as "should" and "ought," and of the
personal pronouns. It is possible, of course, to treat the bracer
о
program
with objectivity. During the past year and a half, which I have devoted to
research on the subject, 1 have attempted to do just this. For example, I
have studied, with as little -passion as possible, the impact of the bracero
nrogram on farm wages in the U.S. Southwest. This sort of treatment is useful
enough, even indispensable, in its place» But it does not preempt the field.
Every social scientist is a citizen as well as a scientist, and his role as
citizen permits ,him, indeed requires him, to trace the implications of his
findings for "shouldnsss" and "oughtness , " public policy and individual conduct.
This paper, then, is intended as a supplement to, and extension of, the objective
analysis which has preceded it.
A most basic point is often overlooked in discussions of what should be and
could be do
до
about the bracero program. There are, broadly speaking, two levels
upon which such discussions
шаг;
proceed. For want of more satisfactory terms,
let us cal'-, one of these levels " reformist ic,M the other, "revolutionary We
should be very certain, in advance, of our level of discourse and our reasons for
choosxr/s it. The two levels are in large measure mutually nullifying* Each
render/: the other essentially irrelevant. I should like to examine each in terms
of the assumptions which underlie it, and the consequences which flow from it.
These sssurqpiions and consequences ere, I fear, often tmreecgrti&ed even by persons
of the very best Intelligence and will.
The first of our two levels of discussion has to do with what has become
known as "compliance” — i.e,, adherence to (and, it is hoped, respect for) the
spirit as well the letter of the documents under which the bracero program *-?
operates. Then:; Include Public Law ?8. passed by the !J.3. Congress in 195>lj
an International Agreement negotiated between the U.3. and Mexican Governments;