urges the Senate to let Public Law 78 die in 1963. We do so for the following reasons: . (1) The Mexican contract labor program has undermined wage and work standards f or American farmworkers on a wholesale basis. The record is clear for all to see. In 1950. the then Secretary of Labor. James Mitchell said: "We must remember that these workers not only do not have the protection of most of the social legislation which places a floor under the economic wellbeing of most Americans. but they are deprived even. of the automatic action of a free labor market. in which labor shortage tends to bring its own correction."I In November 1959. Fortune magazine said: "The farmers preference for them (the braceros) has tended. In some cases. to reduce the wages of domestic migrants. "The reason for this is that farmers can get braceros only when they can prove they face a shortage of domestic labor. To insure that there will be a shortage. many farmers. especially in Texas and California. offer wages and working conditions that domestic workers wont accept." More recently the report of the Welfare Study Commission of California to Gov. Edmund Brown.
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migrants contract labor