In 1928, Charles Teague, a large landowner and agricultural booster in California, argued that Mexican laborers “are so far from being undesirables that the Southwest would experience great
difficulty in getting along without them.” Two years later in 1930, Texas representative John Garner submitted a letter to Congress on behalf of a citizens group that asked, “Does our failure to
restrict Mexican immigration spell the downfall of our Republic, with all its hopes of betterment for humanity?” Around the same time as these statements were made, ethnic Mexicans in the Southwest
increasingly responded to such rhetoric by politically mobilizing themselves around ethnic lines. Why do you believe there was such a range of responses to Mexican immigration in the Southwest
between 1910 and 1945? As you make your case, besure to consider the following questions: • How did shifts in the Southwest and American conomy shape immigration? What were the most important patterns of mobility, mobilization, and/or identity that influenced shifting immigration
debates, and policy? • How did populations already in the U.S., including policy makers, big business, and Mexican Americans, respond to immigration?

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