During a virtual meeting with President Joe Biden on Monday, Mexico’s president proposed the creation of a new migrant labor program. It would allow as many as 800,000 Mexican and Central American workers into the United States temporarily. But his comparisons to a former program known for its abuses has caused concern among workers rights advocates.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the United States economy would benefit from the “strength” and “youth” of Mexican laborers, and compared it to the World War II-era “Bracero” program that brought millions of Mexicans to work on U.S. farms between 1942-1964.

That’s alarming to worker’s rights advocates like Evy Peña of the binational Centro de los Derechos de Migrante (CDM).

"We know there was systemic abuse to Mexico people under that program," she said. "So it’s very troubling that the Bracero program is the starting point for this new agreement."

Abuses under the Bracero program included low wages, dangerous working conditions, poor living conditions and racial discrimination.

"Instead of looking to these flawed models of the past, the United States and Mexico should be looking at the future to a model of labor migration based on human rights," Peña said, adding that the Biden administration should also take immediate action to improve standards and oversight of existing guest worker programs that were largely based on the Bracero program anyway.

Asked about López Obrador’s proposal, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that reinstituting the Bracero program would require congressional action.