MEXICO CITY (AP) April 22, 2005 - Mexico's Congress approved on Thursday a US$27 million fund for former migrant farmworkers who labored in the United States, many of whom had funds deducted from their paychecks for pension and savings plans they never received.

Activists claim that some 150,000 ex-farmworkers and their heirs in Mexico and in the United States have a right to the 298 million pesos (?21 million) in government money that will initially be placed in the fund.

Congress voted 361 to 0, with four abstentions, to start payouts within two months, after a reliable list of those eligible has been drawn up and the bill is published in the congressional register.

The fund could be increased to as much as US$36 million (?28 million).

Confusion surrounds the money, and how many former workers have a claim to it.

About 2.5 million Mexicans toiled in the United States between 1942 and the mid-1960s under a guest worker plan known as the "bracero" program.

Between 1942 and 1949, about 10 percent of the workers' paychecks were withheld for savings and pension funds that were supposed to be paid to them once they returned to Mexico, as an incentive for migrants to return home.

They never got the money, and it had previously been thought to have disappeared at a government bank in Mexico.

Some activists say as many as 300,000 workers may have been defrauded; but if the deduction program lasted only from 1942 to 1946, as Mexican officials suggest, it may involve as few as 15,000 to 20,000 workers.

However, the law approved Thursday will grant payments for ex-braceros who worker between 1942 and 1964.

Congress stressed that the funds were not intended to repay, dollar for dollar, the missing money, but rather as a broader social welfare program for the ex-farmworkers.

The missing money, which could range in value in today's dollars from US$500 million to US$1 billion, disappeared somewhere between U.S. and Mexican banks.

Officials of Wells Fargo Bank, which was in charge of transferring some of the funds, have said they have few documents, but believe the bank complied with its obligations under the old arrangement.

Mexican officials have said there is no evidence Mexico ever received the money. But the Mexican government bank where it was allegedly deposited suffered for years from deficient record keeping, mergers, a name change and closure.