Latino immigrants first started arriving in Michigan around the year 1915. This group was almost completely made up of Mexican workers. Theses Mexicans came to find work in such places as constructing and repairing railroads, in the upcoming automobile plants mostly centered in Detroit, and in one of the state’s main agricultural resources; sugar beat fields. These workers came to fill vacant jobs due to World War I and the many people heading to Europe due the war.
            Up until around that time the people that tended to the sugar fields were mostly from Eastern Europe. However, with the need to find new workers, employers turned to the south. In Texas, many Mexicans and other Latinos had already immigrated and were working in similar agricultural jobs. Employers from Michigan recruited these workers. In addition, the flourishing automobile business needed many employees for their factories. They also found Mexican employees to fit their needs.
These Latinos were newcomers and as stated the first to arrive in Michigan and were not seen as “Americans” by many of the current population. Less then 20 years prior to these first Latinos immigrating to Michigan, many Michiganders had participated in the war against Spain. Though it would seem this would be unrelated to these new immigrants, many people then were immigrant and Hispanics and Mexicans were seen as the same. They were not very welcome into the state. Nonetheless there were nearly 4000 Mexicans living in Detroit by 1920, the most populated area by Mexicans .
After the war, the state of Michigan and the country as a whole faced a recession. Due to the recession, many Latino employees in Michigan were laid off. However, by the mid 20’s the recession had faded and the need for field and factory employees was in demand again. In addition, in the early 20’s the government had passed a bill restricting immigration from Europe. This also contributed to the rise of Latino workers immigrating to the state of Michigan.
Though the Latinos in Michigan were not facing the racism they did in the southern United States, Latinos in Michigan did experience discrimination and harsh working conditions in the fields and factories. Moreover, in the 1920’s the consumption of sugar and demand of it skyrocketed. Michigan was one of the only places it was domestically grown. The field labor faced harsher and longer hours in the sugar beat fields as this demand went up. As the working conditions worsened in the sugar beat fields, many Latino migrants moved to the automobile industry.
In the late 1920’s the population of Latino migrants was still rising. In Detroit by the end of 1928, there were 15,000 Mexican migrants and their descendants living in the city . That was a 375% increase in only eight years. Unfortunately with the 30’s came the Great Depression.
With the Great Depression came the loss of jobs all over the United States, including Michigan. The government saw the need to reserve jobs for “Americans,” which apparently the citizens of Latino decent did not fit in description, even though they were born in America. The government decided it would be best to send Mexicans back to Mexico. They offered paid transportation back to Mexico, which may have seemed life relief for some who were without work and not being offered aid by the government. For a time Diego Rivera (living in Detroit at the time) even supported and encouraged Mexicans to return to Mexico, though he later reversed his opinion. In the end, between 1928 and 1936 the population of Mexican in Detroit shrank to 1,200 .
In response to the depression, President Roosevelt enacted the New Deal. The New Deal helped stabilize the American economy again. Michigan began bringing in Latinos again from the Texas area. Though the New Deal was supposed to enforce right for labor forces, these rights were never really enforced by anybody for workers such as the Latinos in Michigan working sugar beat fields, railroad lines, or in the automobile industry. By the end of the 1930’s the Latino population in the state of Michigan and especially Detroit was on the rise again.