This essay traces the history of the Bracero program in relation to the citrus industry. The Bracero Program was a series of bilateral guest worker agreements between the U.S. and Mexico. Officially known as the Emergency Farm Labor Program in 1942, it authorized a systematic contracting of Mexican laborers known as “braceros” by farmers to address the labor shortages in agriculture that resulted from WWII enlistment, increased war industry jobs, and Japanese internment.