We had a good, workable program..which allowed
legal migrant workers to earn a decent living while obeying the law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_Program ...But the unions, Caesar Chavez and the democrats didn't like things being done "decently and in order".
This from the next to last paragraph of the above essay;
" Labor unions that tried to organize agricultural workers after World War II targeted the Bracero program as a key impediment to improving the wages of domestic farm workers.
[8] These unions included the National Farm Laborers Union (NFLU), later called the National Agricultural Workers Union (NAWU), headed by
Ernesto Galarza, and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), AFL-CIO. During his tenure with the
Community Service Organization,
César Chávez was given a grant by the AWOC to organize in
Oxnard, California which culminated in a protest of domestic U.S. agricultural workers of the
U.S. Department of Labor's administration of the program.
[8] In January 1961, in an effort to publicize the effects of bracero labor on labor standards, the AWOC led a strike of lettuce workers at 18 farms in the
Imperial Valley, an agricultural region on the California-Mexico border and a major destination for braceros"