The Story Behind Contract Labor
During the long days of the nineteenth century, Puerto Ricans had suffered under Spanish rule. A century later, they had faith in the American foreign policy sponsored by Theodore Roosevelt to ease and improve the Island’s difficulties and begin an era of enlightment and advancement. In having strong hopes, many Puerto Rican’s believed that coming to America, would improve their lifestyle, decrease the poverty they lived in back at their homeland, and to stay in America and have the rest of their family members transferred; unfortunately, not everything worked out the way they had planned. Although Puerto Ricans became citizens of the United States under the Jones Act of 1917, being assigned to labor contracts, the deal was for them to return back home when the contract had expired. These labor contracts were a great opportunity for the Puerto Ricans to come to America with a job awaiting them and some even decided to stay afterwards, taking illegal advantage of this opportunity.
After the United States entered WWII, Caribbean immigration was on the rise. “Almost 50,000 Caribbeans (black and white) settled in the country between 1941 and 1950. They took advantage of the rapidly expanding war economy and postwar economic growth. Beginning in 1943, thousands of migrant workers were brought from the region to work in American agriculture and thus help the war effort.” But, according to the first chapter of Looking for Work in the Global Economy: An Introduction, during WWII, U.S. policy makers were actually hesitant to recruit Puerto Ricans because of their American status as citizens of the U.S. The government feared that these immigrants
would remain in the States after their work here is done. Therefore, War Manpower Commission recruited only a limited number of Puerto Ricans for food processing and railroad work. Some of these recruited stayed in Philadelphia contributing to Puerto Rican’s in that community. But, there was indeed a...
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