Throughout history, the experiences of this group may have changed as the flow of immigration and the dominant’s group interests fluctuated, but their relation with the dominant group always remained that of a colonist and the colonized. Mexican Americans, as an ethnic group, were introduced into American society through the conquest and colonization (Healey 2014, p.281). High levels of prejudice and ethnocentrism, differential in power, and competition with the dominant group played an important role in the position and status this group of people were introduced to and remained in U.S. society in current times. Mexican immigrants that entered U.S. society after the conquest were subjects of already existing prejudice and stereotypes, and already established relations between the two groups. As opposed to the Mexican population of the states that were taken over by the U.S. conquest, the competition of immigrants with the dominant group was about the available jobs in the U.S instead about land. Most immigrants from Mexico, and especially migrant workers engaged in low paid jobs of the primary sector of the U.S. economy were especially vulnerable to exploitation and rejection by the dominant group. Mexican Americans, as many other minority groups in the U.S., were treated as inferior since the very beginning. This especially applies toward dark skinned Mexican migrants.
As the majority of Mexican migrant workers worked in the primary sector of the U.S. economy, which often meant outdoor manual work, they were (and still are) often called by derogatory terms such as wetbacks, beaners, spics, etc. As the competition with the dominant group increased, levels of prejudice, racism, and discrimination increased as well.