Deportation: Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans faced the threat of deportation during the Great Depression. The Federal Bureau of Immigration and local authorities rounded up Mexican immigrants and naturalised Mexican American citizens and shipped them to Mexico to reduce relief roles.

Job Crisis: Mexican Americans experienced the job crisis like everyone else, which was caused by the Great Depression. Many lost their jobs and struggled to find employment.

Herbet Hoover’s secretary of labor, also helped pass local laws and arrange agreements that prevented Mexican Americans from holding jobs.

Repatriation: More than 400,000 “repatriados” who were mostly U.S. citizens by birth, were sent across the US-Mexico border from Arizona, California, and Texas. This led to a significant reduction in the Mexican-born population in Texas and Los Angeles.

The “repatriation drives,” a series of informal raids that took place around the United States during the Great Depression. Local governments and officials deported up to 1.8 million people to Mexico

Relief Assistance: The New Deal offered some assistance to Mexican Americans. The Farm Security Administration established camps for migrant farm workers in California, and the CCC and WPA hired unemployed Mexican Americans for relief jobs. However, many did not qualify for relief assistance due to residency requirements, and agricultural workers were not eligible for certain benefits.

2 – Work Progress Administration and National Youth Administration.

3 –  It impacted lives as women weren’t expected to work prior to the new deal. This is because their family members were laid of or because they weren’t making enough to survive. The great depression also impacted women as some married women weren’t allowed to work at all.

4 – The Great Depression of the 1930s saw more American unmarried women working from nine to five, mostly in repetitive, boring, subordinate, dead-end jobs. But the number of working women doubled between 1870 and 1940. During World War II it doubled once again. – Helen Fisher

1. Significant events

• Scottsboro Boys Trial

• Reemergence of the KKK and race riots

• Shifts in political allegiance from republican to democrat due to New Deal policies, however some of which excluded African Americans

• Migration from south to north in search of jobs

  2. The Social Security Act of 1935

     Support for Families:

     • The Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program provided financial assistance to low-income families, including many African American single-parent households. This helped alleviate poverty and support children’s needs.

     Access to Unemployment Benefits:

     • The unemployment insurance provisions eventually included more workers, providing financial assistance to those who lost their jobs. This was beneficial for African Americans, particularly during economic downturns.

  3. How it impacted their lives specifically

• African American unemployment rates were 4-6 times higher – “last to be hired and first to be fired”

• CCC run by a southern racist meaning African Americans did not join and those who did faced strict segregation

• Worsening poverty

  4. Quotes

     • “The Social Security Act created the first national system of benefits, although

       individual states operated the parts they had control over very differently.”

     
     

     • “African Americans suffered particularly badly in the Depression, often being

       the last to be taken on and the first to be fired.”

     
     

     • “NRA codes allowed for African Americans to be paid less than whites for doing the same jobs.”
       

     • “Anti-lynching bills were introduced into Congress in 1934 and 1937, but Roosevelt did nothing to support either and both were eventually defeated.”

     
     
     

The Great Depression of the 1930s had a significant impact on Mexican Americans. They faced job crises, food shortages, and the threat of deportation. Many Mexican Americans lefts the United States voluntarily during this time.

1.    Mexicans were deported

Immigrants were offered free train rides to Mexico, and some went voluntarily, but many were either tricked or coerced into repatriation, and some U.S. citizens were deported simply on suspicion of being Mexican. All in all, hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants, especially farmworkers, were sent out of the country during the 1930s--many of them the same workers who had been eagerly recruited a decade before.

2.    Discrimination and social exclusion

• Mexican Americans faced increased racism and scapegoating, with many blaming them for job shortages.

• Signs reading “No Mexicans Allowed” appeared in businesses and public places.

• Many faced violence from police and vigilantes, especially in Labor disputes.

4. Housing & Living Conditions

• Many Mexican American families lived in barrios (segregated neighbourhoods) with poor sanitation and overcrowding.

• With widespread job loss, many families relied on mutual aid networks to survive.

• The government provided little relief to Mexican American communities, often excluding them from New Deal programs.

5. Labor Organizing & Resistance

• Despite discrimination, some Mexican American workers joined labor strikes to fight for better wages.

• Organizations like LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens) formed to advocate for civil rights.

• Some Mexican Americans who were deported later returned and became activists for labor and immigrant rights.

4.        Quote/reference/statistic that supports the information above.

• Statistic: Between 1 to 1.8 million people of Mexican descent were deported or pressured to leave the U.S. during the 1930s.

  • Source: Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez, Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s (1995).

• Quote:

"They put us on a train, and we ended up in Mexico. I was born in Los Angeles. We didn’t know anything about Mexico."

• Testimony from repatriated U.S. citizen, quoted in Decade of Betrayal.

• Statistic: In Los Angeles, 60% of relief recipients in the early 1930s were of Mexican descent, showing high unemployment.

  • Source: George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (1993).

• Quote:

"Mexicans were not only losing their jobs, but they were being made to feel unwelcome in a country that many had called home for decades."

• Source: Francisco Balderrama, historian, interviewed in PBS’s "The Mexican Repatriation" documentary.

a. Thousands lost their home nationwide, leading to an increase of homelessness. This led to ‘Hoovervilles’ to be built on the outskirt of cities

b. Tariffs implemented by Hoover which hiked prices especially affected port cities, as the main source of revenue and jobs there were ones in trade.

2. Legislation in the and that benefitted them

a. United States Housing act 1937 – Mainly benefitted cities, adding to urban sprawl and setting up communities. Was available for all Americans, but mainly benefitted working-class peoples from cities.

3. How the great depression impacted their lives specifically

a. Skilled, inner city workers had a higher rate of unemployment compared to higher educated people who lived in suburbs

b. Those in cities had better access to government services and food kitchens

c. Crime rose in cities, and gangsters took advantage of the unemployed

4. Quote/reference/statistic that supports the info above

a. Unemployment was higher in cities than the national average (24%), because people moved there in search of jobs to find none

b. At least 82 soup/beadlines in NYC in 1932, serving 85k meals per day

In 1936 a drought occurred in farming states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. This caused the cattle to die and land to completely dry out, this heat was followed by severe winds which blew away the dry soil, causing a dust bowl. This forced many farmers to abandon their houses and belongings. The dust bowl had many implications on rural farmers including starvation, health issues, economic losses, and environmental damage. 

Low prices

Even before the stock market crash, American agriculture was experiencing an overproduction crisis. The sharp decrease in demand caused by the crash only exacerbated already unprofitable prices. 

Destruction of unsellable produce

Before relief acts which incentivised artificially reducing output, many farmers slaughtered animals and left crops to rot because the market price was lower than the cost of harvesting/transporting the goods.

• Tennessee valley authority, 1933, electrification, provided jobs and low cost rentals 

• Farmers relief act, reduce output to raise prices 

• Rural Electrification Act, 1935, bring electricity to rural homes to improve living conditions

• Farm Security Administration, 1937, 95 temporary camps for displaced farmers during dust bowl

Extreme poverty

Government relief programs

Due to relief efforts, the average income for American farmers almost doubled from 1933 to 1937

“We both know that the farmer across the river shot twenty-two of his cattle yesterday, and then shot himself.” - Stott, Documentary Expressions and Thirties America (1973)

‘There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath.” - John Steinbeck, the Grapes of Wrath, 1939

2: Legislation in New Deal that benefitted them
Federal housing Administration (FHA) founded 1934, insured mortgages for middle income households. “For homeowners, the Federal Housing Administration began insuring private home-improvement loans to middle-income families in 1934; in 1938 it became a home-building agency as well” United States - Great Depression, Economic Crisis, 1930s | Britannica so it directly gave middle income families, likely largely the middle class, loans.

I believe the creation of all the new government agencies would require a professional managerial workforce to run them, thereby requiring and employing the labour of many White-Collar workers but I couldn’t find a source that would answer this.

3: How the Great depression impacted then:
Lost their good paying jobs. Had to go on relief payments and wanted to maintain their standard of living but they didn’t get enough relief to do that.
Business failures massively increased (pg. 87 of Depression and the New Deal Student Booklet 2025.pdf | Powered by Box)

4: Quote/reference/statistic that supports the information above.
“They want to cling to some semblance at least of their normal standards of living.” (p 119 textbook)