<--PREV Doc #741  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #743 Document #742; February 26, 1954 To Robert Emmet Lucey Series: EM, WHCF, Official File 124-C The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XV - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part IV: "Pushing ahead along the broad center"; December 1953 to March 1954 Chapter 9: Fending off "the reactionary fringe"   Dear Archbishop Lucey: 1 Thank you very much for your letter of February 15 on the subject of Mexican nationals working in American agriculture.2 I am cognizant of the implications of this serious problem.3 Needless to say, your advice is very much appreciated and I am grateful for your thoughtfulness in sending me your views. I shall have them studied by all the appropriate departments of the government.4 1 Robert Emmet Lucey (S.T.D. North American College 1916), who had been archbishop of San Antonio since 1941, was actively involved in social welfare and labor issues. 2 Lucey had thanked the President for reopening discussions with the Mexican government regarding the importation of Mexican workers, but the Archbishop had made clear his opposition to any legislation that would permit the importation of illegal aliens (same file as document). "There are many of us," he wrote, "who believe that the agricultural labor force in our country is sufficient to meet all the needs of American agriculture when intelligently organized." 3 High wages paid in the United States and poor economic conditions in Mexico had increased the number of illegal aliens entering the United States, and attempts to regulate the traffic had been ineffective. The Migratory Labor Agreement of 1951, which had expired on December 31, 1953, had been extended until January 15 to provide negotiators more time to produce a new agreement (State, Foreign Relations, 1952-1954, vol. IV, The American Republics, pp. 1351-54; U.S. Department of State Bulletin 30, no. 759 [January 11, 1954], 53). Negotiations had broken down over the issue of wages, however, and an interim program enabling the United States to recruit unilaterally and to process migrant workers had been in effect since January 18 (New York Times, Jan. 16, 1954). On February 3 Eisenhower had met with the Mexican ambassador, and both had indicated their desire for renewed negotiations (Smith to Eisenhower, Feb. 3, 1943, same file as document; State, Foreign Relations, 1952-1954, vol. IV, The American Republics, pp. 1354-56). 4 Eisenhower added the last sentence in this paragraph to an earlier draft of this document and asked that copies of the letter be sent to the Secretaries of State and Labor and the Attorney General (see Whitman to Dulles, Feb. 26, 1954, AWF/D-H). The negotiations would produce a new migratory labor agreement, stipulating that the wages paid to Mexican workers could not be less than the prevailing wage established for that activity by the Secretary of Labor. The agreement would be signed on March 10 and remain in effect until December 1955 (State, Foreign Relations, 1952-1954, vol. IV, The American Republics, pp. 1358-60; U.S. Department of State Bulletin 30, no. 770 [March 29, 1954], 467-68; see also no. 902). Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. To Robert Emmet Lucey, 26 February 1954. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 742. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/742.cfm <--PREV Doc #741  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #743

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