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→Migrants and Scapegoats
====Migrants and Scapegoats====
<dh-brad/>Opponents of the program in both nations raised concerns almost immediately. Labor unions in the United States argued that no significant wartime labor shortage existed and therefore no justification for a large continuing influx of migrant workers. Mexico and Mexican laborers raised an issue with violations of the agreement, including that American growers made Mexican workers pay for food, lodging, and tools, and required them to perform tasks beyond those specified in their contracts. Racism was also a common experience for the braceros, as was being paid wages that were far below levels required by the program. <ref>Deborah Cohen, ‘’Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Postwar United States and Mexico’’, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 212-213. See also Robert S. Robinson, “Taking The Fair Deal to the Fields: Truman's Commission on Migratory Labor, Public Law 78, and the Bracero Program, 1950–1952.” ‘’Agricultural History’’ 84, no. 3 (2010): 399. </ref>
Regardless of complaints or violations, the program was renewed in 1947, with Mexicans expanding their work to railroads. The agricultural aspects of the agreement were also renewed in 1951, during the Korean War. Aware of the checkered history of the program, in the early 1950s President Harry S. Truman established a commission to study the agreement, evaluate complaints and violations, and suggest reforms. Any recommendations made by the commission were ignored, ultimately, because the program was economically popular among growers (because of cheap labor) and consumers (who paid lower prices for bracero-harvest crops). President John F. Kennedy finally ended the bracero program in 1964 after his commission determined (and convinced Congress) that the agreement was negatively affecting wages, employment opportunities, and the working conditions of domestic laborers.