Cesar Chavez and illegal immigration by Marian Casillas, Ed.D.
There is now a bust of Cesar Chavez in the Oval Office of the White House.
Cesar Chavez is famous for founding the
United Farm Workers (UFW), and for leading a nonviolent boycott against
California grape growers, protesting poor working conditions.
What most people are unaware of is that he was an opponent of illegal immigration.
He was a third generation American citizen, a Navy veteran having joined the United States Navy in 1946 and he served for two years.
He actively opposed illegal immigration because he saw firsthand how it crippled his ability to unionize farm workers and how it depressed their wages.
He clearly understood the basic laws of supply and demand, the greater the supply of labor, the less the demand and consequently lower wages.
In 1969, Chavez led a march in California to the border of Mexico to protest growers' use of illegal immigrants as strikebreakers. Chavez saw the need to report illegal immigrants who served as strikebreaking replacement workers to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
In 1973, the United Farm Workers lined up along the United States-Mexico border to prevent Mexican immigrants from entering the United States illegally and potentially undermining unionization efforts.
Chavez demanded that the Federal government close the border, reported suspected illegal immigrants to immigration officials, and put his brother Richard in charge of a contingency of workers to patrol the border.
In 1979 Chavez testified before Congress, stating, "When the farm workers strike and their strike is successful, the employers go to Mexico and have unlimited, unrestricted use of illegal alien strikebreakers to break the strike. And, for over 30 years, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has looked the other way and assisted in the strikebreaking. I do not remember one single instance in 30 years where the Immigration Service has removed strikebreakers. The employers use professional smugglers to recruit and transport human contraband across the Mexican border for the specific act of strikebreaking.”
He is famous for popularizing the slogan "SÃ, se puede" (Spanish for "Yes, one can" or, "Yes, it can be done").
Yes, one can be against illegal immigration, just like Cesar Chavez.