Alejandro Vega has 80 years of age, but his mind is clear. He still remembers clearly how it was crossing the border from his small people of China, in the Mexican state of New León, to Texas, to be employed at the fields. It had 17 years of that time in that one, it was strong and it was ready to do what was necessary to make the living and to help his family.

“ There was a lot of work that to do”, he remembers. “Piscábamos cotton and beans, we were preparing in big pans the poison to kill insects and were paving the way to place it”. It was an arduous work and often it was falling ill for inhaling insecticide, but he never hesitated to do everything for what one was asking him. And it was never imagined that he would have to wait six decades to be rewarded appropriately for his sacrifice.

It was the year 1945. Three years earlier the governments of the United States and Mexico had come to an agreement to allow to thousands of workpeople to cross the north border and do works in the agriculture and the railroad industry in order to fill the gap in the labor that arose during the second world war. To the agreement they baptized it like the “Program Laborer”.

In accordance with the dealing, the employers would take 10 per cent of his salary from the workpeople, would deposit the funds in American banks and they would be transferred later to Mexican banks. The laborers then would claim the money on having returned to his country.

One believes that in that one then some of them received what was corresponding to them, but the majority did not receive it. Partly, because they were not informed about the dealing that two countries had done. But for many about which yes they knew it, the problem turned out to be slightly complex. They could not go to protest where his salaries, the money simply faded away.

A group of six laborers began a federal demand in California in 2001 to demand his funds, but this one faced several obstacles, so much so few ones thought that it would be successful. To start, it was not clear if the American courts would have jurisdiction on the government of Mexico. Nevertheless, the perseverance and the patience possibly yielded fruit.

A few days ago one came to an agreement out of court in the collective case and the government of Mexico, without accepting any guilt, agreed to allow to thousands of laborers who live in the United States to request a compensation of 38.000 weight, the equivalent to approximately 3.500 dollars. Most of them now have between 80 and 90 years. His spouses or children who survive them also will be able to request them.

The trick is in that it will be necessary to present original documents that show that really they were hired like laborers between the first of January, 1942 and December 31, 1946. The request must already be done be in a Mexican consulate, the Mexican embassy in Washington, DC, or in the signature of lawyers Hughes Socol Piers Resnick and Dym, in Chicago.

This case does not include to those who were returned to Mexico but to those who remained, like Mr. Vega, which legal resident did to himself in 1952. According to Joshua Karsh, one of the lawyers who was employed at the case, although the dealing was that the funds would deliver them to themselves on having returned to his country, for many the historical evidence shows that it would be useless, since so many people that tried to claim his salaries lost in Mexico, did not achieve it.

Mr. Vega has hopes to be able to claim what corresponds to him. He might charge up to 7.000 dollars, although it would be a sweet and sour experience since half of this money would correspond to his dear wife Enriqueta, who per years was employed along with him at the field. She died two years ago. “If the money comes, it will be welcome”, he says. If not, it does not matter; after all it has survived well without him, during more than six decades

(c) 2008 by Maria Helen Salinas.