When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, there was hope he would provide relief to the suffering Mexican American communities across the United States. This did not materialize. While no New Deal program explicitly barred people by race or immigration status from receiving assistance, occupational status was used to exclude Mexican Americans from receiving Depression relief. The Social Security Act of 1935, for example, barred agricultural and domestic workers from both social security benefits and unemployment insurance, which effectively excluded many African and Mexican Americans from this early social safety net. At the local level, few Mexican migrant laborers received relief, since residency restrictions often required the applicant to have lived in the county for a set amount of time, which excluded migratory laborers.