Mexican Immigration

Mexican Immigration

        Mexicans are a pretty common people to come to America. Their country is right under ours, yet America is a much better place to be. We have a lot more opportunities here and a lot better jobs with far better pay. My step dad lived In Mexico and said he wouldn’t even make a fifth of what he makes up here doing the same job. He says life is much better here, Mexico isn’t just absolutely terrible, he just prefers it much more up here. Mexicans tend to stay more down south, within warmer climates, including California.

        According to wiki, 19 and early 20th century, Mexican immigration wasn’t something people really cared about. They were free to come and leave the states as they pleased so they often left Mexico to live here. They had no restrictions and often came to work construction, do railroads or just have more jobs in general. Also According to wiki they came because of economic inequality, rural poverty and they wanted better lives which pulled them into the states during the 20th century.

        Sadly, In 1929, they decided that they couldn’t afford to have immigrants come and get jobs considering everyone was looking for jobs due to the great depression. America didn’t even have enough jobs for it’s own people so they couldn’t afford to give them to other people.  Thousands of Mexicans were sent back across the border, and they made barriers for future immigrants like the fence. According to wiki, from 1929 to 1931 legal Mexican immigration stopped by 95%, which is an insane amount. During the next 10 years after that, about as many as 400 thousand people were sent back to Mexico, which back then, and even now an insane amount of people.

        The limitation to Mexican immigration lasted till World War 2, when the United States was short labored and needed as many people as possible. The Bracero program was created to give millions of Mexicans job since American men were at war. They were given house, and 30 cents an hour which was minimum wage back then. To make sure this program didn’t last they made their families stay at home so they were forced to go back and be with their families when they were done, but some didn’t comply.

        In 1954 Illegal Mexicans were becoming a growing problem so border patrol started searching for and deporting them. At least up to 1 million people were caught and deported. Soon they stopped due to people complain on how violent and aggressive they were when retrieving people. Also the fact that they’d even deport the children of illegal parents even though they were born in America.

        Mexicans have been in Minnesota since the early 1900’s though. A big reason they came here was because of the 1907 economic depression. Also the Mexican revolution, and racism in southwestern states drove them to come to Minnesota. Mexican communities developed in rural and urban places across the state. Some of these places include Wilmar, Minneapolis, Owatonna, and Chaska. They’ve established themselves and thrive well. According to cultureconnectioncare.org they have hundreds of businesses, churches, Spanish newspapers and even their own Mexican soccer league.

        In Minnesota, The Mexican population is actually younger in than Minnesota’s overall population according to mncompass.org. In their research they discovered that the average age is about 24 for Mexicans compared to average Minnesotans coming in at 38. 62% of Mexicans are native born here and 91% of children are native born, showing that most of them are legal. Half of those children though, have illegal parents.

        Most Hispanics live in the lower part of Minnesota, more so in the twin cities. There are about 180,000 Hispanics living there currently, which is about 10% of the populations. Graduations rates are on the rise, still a little low but they’re rising. In the last 10 years, graduations went from 33% to 58% which is nearly double. It’s still lower than state average at 80%. Only 16% have bachelor’s degrees though, compared to Minnesota’s 33% percent average.