ABSTRACT
The development of large-scale agricultural production in the United States depended on the use of immigrant labor—first Chinese and Japanese laborers who came to work on farms in California and Hawaii in the nineteenth century, and later Mexican workers, who made up the majority of the agricultural workforce in the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Throughout this period, U.S. immigration laws have played an important role in shaping the agricultural labor force by restricting the entry of some foreign workers while allowing others to labor in the United States under temporary guest worker programs. Beginning in the early twentieth century, social movements such as unionization efforts and labor strikes emerged to fight for protections for immigrant agricultural workers, most notably the United Farm Workers movement led by César Chávez, which brought Americans’ attention to the plight of farmworkers for the first time. In the twenty-first century, the employment of foreign agricultural labor, especially from Mexico, remains a contentious political issue.
