Definition of "bracero" [bracero]

• A Mexican laborer permitted to enter the United States and work for a limited period of time, especially in agriculture. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "They then took a crew of illegal "wetbacks," what they called bracero laborers from Mexico back in those days, out into these pecan orchards and they "thrashed" the nuts out of the trees with long bamboo poles, the nuts falling onto large canvases spread under the trees."
• "(bracero from the Spanish word brazo for arm, meaning strong-armed worker)."
• "A fact for Eric K, using a distinction between “immigrant” and the Bush approach toward workers as economic units, rather than people: from 1942-1964, we had agricultural guestworkers in what was called the bracero program."