The Repatriation Movement occured during the 1930s, when many Mexican-Americans were forced to go to Mexico. A total of one million people were forced to leave or left voluntarily due to significant harassment.

Mexican Americans were no longer needed because employers had access to a huge pool of inexpensive domestic labor thanks to the steady stream Dust Bowl Americans leaving their farms. Often Mexican Americans were made scapegoats for America's economic woes. Women without their husbands and children in orphanages were forced to be repatriated as were the usual targets like the mentally ill. Many employed citizens left because of threats of violence and termination from employment. The Repatriation Movement ended during World War II, as immigration laws were relaxed because greater production was needed.

Further Reading

• Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez

Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s

• Abraham Hoffman, Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression: Repatriation Pressures, 1929-1939 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974).

External Links

• History From The Margins

• The American Apple: From Family Grown to Foreign Migrant Labor