Atlas of Hispanic-American History

greater equality and political power. All

this organizing had a measurable impact.

During the 1970s, the number of

Mexican Americans elected to public

office increased 200 percent.

Even so, the problems facing Mexican

Americans remained substantial. As of the

late 1990s, 28 percent of Mexican

Americans lived in poverty, a greater pro-

portion than the 23.5 percent of 1981. The

high school dropout rate among Mexican

Americans was 50 percent. Despite some

gains, Mexican Americans are still under-

represented in terms of elected officials.

Many Mexican Americans are recent

immigrants, enduring the hard times often

faced by new arrivals, perhaps with well-

founded hopes of bettering their condition

in the future. But many Mexican

Americans born in the United States

inherit the poverty of their parents and

seem unable to change it. The children of

migrant worker families, for example, are

still unlikely to receive adequate education

and health care, despite the advances

wrought by the farmworkers movement of

the 1960s and 1970s.

Immigration Law

and the U.S. Economy

As it had been for most of the 20th centu-

ry, the United States at the century’s end

continued to be a magnet for Mexicans in

search of a better life. At the same time,

the relationship between the U.S. and

Mexican governments evolved—as did

the relationship between the American

majority population and Mexican immi-

grants in the United States as the eco-

nomic and social forces at work on both

sides of the border ebbed and flowed.

From 1965 to 1976, a generally pros-

perous era in the United States, prospec-

tive Mexican immigrants benefited by

not facing the ceiling of 20,000 visas per

country that was then applied to the

Eastern Hemisphere. By the late 1970s,

with the United States facing an eco-

nomic downturn, the flow of illegal aliens

from Mexico became a major issue in

domestic politics and in U.S.-Mexico

relations. Due to this pressure, in 1976,

the U.S. Congress extended the immigra-

tion ceiling to cover Western

Hemisphere countries. At the same time,

various provisions of immigration law

permitted the number of legal immi-

grants to average more than 20,000 per

year, and all told, more than 600,000

Mexicans immigrated legally to the

United States during the 1970s.

Likewise when a deep U.S. recession

intensified U.S. anti-immigrant senti-

ment in the early 1980s and more

Americans began accusing “foreigners” of

taking away jobs, Congress again

responded, passing the Immigration

Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986.

196 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY

Mexican-American Population Distribution, 2000