【经济学人】墨西哥短工丨2017.02.04丨总第810期

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MEXICAN immigrants were said to be holding down wages and taking jobs that could go to honest Americans. （读者试译） The poorest natives were supposed to be suffering most grievously. “We cannot afford to disregard it,” intoned the president. “We do not condone it.” The immigrants were soon sent home and not allowed to return.

（期待您的翻译，明天会有针对这句话的长难句解析哟~） 最穷的当地人蒙受最严重的损失。“我们不能无视它，”总统说道，“我们不会容忍它。”移民很快会被遣送回国，并不被允许返回。

All that happened in the early 1960s. The president was John F. Kennedy; the Mexicans were participating in the bracero programme, which allowed almost half a million people a year to take seasonal work on America’s farms. But the parallels with the present are plain. Donald Trump has also complained that immigrants are keeping Americans from good jobs and has promised to do something about it (another parallel: not since Kennedy has America seen such an astonishing presidential coiffure ). So it is a good moment for a bracing new assessment of the bracero scheme and its demise .

一切发生在上世纪60年代早期。那时的美国总统是约翰·肯尼迪；墨西哥人参与到工人计划当中，每年有几乎50万人在美国的农场从事季节性工作。但是两位总统有明显的相似之处。特朗普同样抱怨移民使美国人找不到好工作并承诺采取相应措施（另一个相似之处是在肯尼迪之前，美国还从未见过如此奇异的总统发型）。所以这是对工人计划及其失败重新评估的好时机。

• Pa rallel n. 平行线；对比

• Coiffure 发型

• Demise 终止，失败

Michael Clemens and Hannah Postel of the Centre for Global Development, and Ethan Lewis of Dartmouth College, have used archived records of American agricultural jobs and wages to test whether Kennedy was right. Did ending the bracero scheme in 1964 in fact lead to higher wages and more work for Americans in the fields?

来自全球发展中心的Michael Clemens以及Hannah Postel，和达特茅斯学院的Ethan Lewis，使用美国农业就业和薪资的归档记录来测试肯尼迪做法的正确性。1964年终止工人计划到底有没有提高美国农民的工资并给他们带来更多工作？

• archived records 归档记录

The answer is a firm no. In states where farmers had relied heavily on foreign labour—a group that includes California and Texas—American natives found a few more farm jobs in the mid 1960s. But the rise was small and temporary; within a few years the long decline in agricultural jobs had resumed. And the trend was almost identical in states where there had been no braceros. Similarly, farm wages rose in states where there had been lots of migrant workers, states where there had been few migrant workers and states where there had been almost none (see chart). Ending the bracero scheme seems to have affected American workers not a bit.

答案当然是没有。在农场主严重依赖外来劳动力的州——包括加利福尼亚和德克萨斯——在60年代中期美国本地人得到的农场工作的数量有所增加。但增加的幅度很小，并且是暂时的；几年内农业工作长期衰退的情况已经恢复。而在没有墨西哥短工的州趋势也大致相同。在拥有大量移民工人的州，和拥有少量以及几乎没有移民工人的州，农场工资涨幅相似（见图表）。工人计划的终止似乎丝毫没有影响到美国工人。