If these walls could talk – El Paso County farm that served as processing center for Bracero Program evokes memories of a different era

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Francisco Uviña was 19 when he crossed the U.S. border in search for work in the 1950’s. Like many other Mexican laborers of that time, Uviña was signed up for the Bracero Program which offered a solid wage and an opportunity of a lifetime to live and work in the agriculture sector of the United States. Uviña first heard of the Bracero Program from friends and neighbors in his hometown of San Luis de Cordero, Durango. In the spring of 1953, he then joined a caravan of over 1,000 laborers who traveled by bus to to Chihuahua City, Mexico, to register for the program. This year marks the 76th anniversary of the Bracero Program, a labor program that allowed more than four million Mexican men to cross into the United States to work the fields after U.S. men went off to fight in World War II.

Juarez has become a limbo for Central American migrants who decided to delay plans to cross into U.S

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By Veronica Martinez

For years Casa del Migrante, a shelter in Ciudad Juarez, has been a haven and a crossing point for immigrants coming from the south, but the uncertainty of new immigration policies under the Trump presidency is convincing some of them to remain at the border indefinitely. In 2015  the shelter received 5,600 immigrants. Last year the number increased to more than 9,000, officials said. Ana Lizeth Bonilla, 28, sways back a stroller back and forth watching her two year-old son, Jose Luis, as he sleeps. “Now, we’re just waiting for her,” the pregnant woman says as her arm rests on her baby bump.

Construction work can be an American nightmare for immigrants

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EL PASO — Finding the American dream has always been difficult for new immigrants, but for workers in the construction industry the struggle has been especially tough. Squalid living arrangements and torment from unscrupulous employers are just two of the struggles that they endure in order to establish a new life in this country. UTEP Sociology Professor Dr. Cristina Morales told an audience at the Center for Inter-American and Border Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) that immigrant workers have to overcome serious obstacles to find and keep jobs in the very competitive and harsh construction industry. “The thought of what immigrant construction workers and their families have to live through never crosses anybody else’s mind. It is time for everyone to at least have a small glimpse of what really happens,” Morales said.