still in progress, hundreds of thousands of
Mexicans entered the United States in the
1920s. California alone had an annual
increase in its Mexican-American popula-
tion of 20.4 percent, giving it more than
300,000 people of Mexican descent by
- Chicago had 20,000 Mexican
Americans by 1925, the largest popula-
tion of Hispanic Americans outside the
Southwest.
Some attempts were made in the
1920s to restrict the flow of Mexicans into
the United States. The $8 head tax and lit-
eracy requirement were put back in force;
these, plus a $10 visa fee, effectively
excluded most poor Mexicans from enter-
ing the United States legally. Nativists, as
those who opposed immigration were
called, urged that immigration quotas also
be applied to Mexico, but agribusiness
and other industries successfully fought
any such provisions to protect their access
to a supply of low-wage laborers.
Even the existing requirements failed
to keep Mexicans out; immigrants simply
entered illegally, as undocumented work-
ers. In 1924 Congress established the
Border Patrol to try to stop illegal immi-
gration from Mexico. But the patrol’s
staff of 450 was woefully inadequate to
police the 2,000-mile border. Many
undocumented workers entered the
country with the help of coyotes, profes-
sional smugglers of immigrants, who
brought them hidden in the backs of cars
or trucks. Many waded across the Rio
Grande, thus inspiring the creation of a
new derogatory term for Mexican
Americans: “wetbacks.”
Agricultural and other employers
were more than happy to hire undocu-
mented workers, knowing that the work-
ers’ fear of capture would make them
even more vulnerable to exploitation.
Employers sometimes even hired coy-
otes to bring in illegal laborers.
Exploitation of Mexican workers was usu-
ally confined to low pay, but not always. It
was not uncommon for an employer to
cheat his workers as well by reporting
them to the authorities for deportation
after they had picked the crops but before
they had been paid.
In 1929 legal immigration from
Mexico virtually ceased when the United
States began to strictly enforce existingTHE AGE OF WORLD WARS 143Selected Destinations for Mexican Migrant Labor, 1910–1940