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Cesar Chavez:
A Leader for Border Security

Cesar Chavez, a Mexican American Civil Rights leader, and farm labor activist formed a union called United Farm Workers, which was a union of Mexican Americans and undocumented farm workers, using the strategy of non-violence to better the conditions of farm workers in the Southwestern part of the Untied States. His legacy is legendary, and he is very similar to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Many of his boycotts were toward big agricultural businesses and were extremely successful in the beginning. Wages increased dramatically and the safety for Chavez’s farm workers was improved too. However, the problem of big agri-businesses, using illegal aliens as workers to break Chavez’s strikes, was always a problem for the UFW. On numerous occasions, when Chavez would go on strike to protest the abuse from agri-businesses, they would use illegal immigrants to break his strikes. These big businesses would always defeat Chavez in latter part of his union’s history, and the United States government would do nothing to help the UFW. It was because of this abuse from big agri-businesses that Chavez became extremely critical of illegal immigration and the employers that abused these workers. History’s record on Chavez’s views on illegal immigration showed that he was an opponent to it, wanting a strict enforcement of the U.S.-Mexican border, so that illegal immigrants could not break the UFW’s strikes.
In the late 1950s, in Oxnard, California, big agricultural businesses brought over illegal Mexican immigrant workers from Mexico to work in the fields, exploiting them savagely. Chavez was against this, saying: “The Jobs [that illegal Mexican immigrants had] belonged to local workers…Braceros [or illegal Mexican immigrants] didn’t make any money, and they were exploited viciously, forced to work under conditions the local people would not tolerate” (Ferriss and Sandoval 56). Here, Chavez had empathy for what the illegal aliens were going through, but he felt that the jobs they had were for American citizens and undocumented workers that joined his union. The union he ran did embrace anyone regardless of residency, but many illegal immigrants refused to join, trying to make it out on their own as cheap hired labor. He would go on to protest the Bracero program, end the abuse by growers of the illegal alien workers, and secure jobs for local residents. Chavez, on another occasion, spoke out against illegal immigration by testifying to the Subcommittee on Labor of the Senate Committee on April 16, 1969, saying that: "Our potential competition appears almost unlimited as thousands upon thousands of green carders pour across the border during peak harvest seasons. These are people who, though lawfully admitted to the United States for permanent residence, have not now, and probably never had, any bona fide intention of making the United States of America their permanent home. They come here to earn American dollars to spend in Mexico where the cost of living is lower. They are natural economic rivals of those who become American citizens or who otherwise decide to stake out their future in this country. In abolishing the bracero program, Congress has but scotched the snake, not killed it. The program lives on in the annual parade of thousands of illegal and green carders across the United States-Mexico border to work in our fields. To achieve law and order in any phase of human activity, legislators must pay [h]eed to other laws not made by man, one of which is the economic law of supply and demand. We are asking Congress to pay heed to this law in the light of some hard facts about farm labor supply along our southern border. Otherwise, extension of NLRA coverage to farm workers in that part of the country will not produce much law and order. What we ask is some way to keep the illegals and green carders from breaking strikes; some civil remedy against growers who employ behind our picket lines those who have entered the United States illegally, and, likewise those green carders who have not permanently moved their residence and domicile to the United States" (Chavez 8). Chavez, knowing economics, felt that illegal immigration made the job market more competitive for American citizens, feeling that illegal immigrants did not want to become U.S. citizens, and that they will always be used to break UFW’s strikes. So, Chavez advocated for a strict enforcement of the U.S.-Mexican border (Gutierrez 197). He felt that if this was done, wages would improve for his workers in the UFW, and that illegal immigrant scab labor would not exist because of border enforcement. However, Chavez was not successful in getting the U.S.-Mexican border enforced and big agri-businesses continued to encourage illegal immigration, so they could hire illegal aliens, trying to break the UFW strikes, and ruin Chavez.
In the late 1960s, corruption in the United States government, the U.S. border patrol, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service caused a growth of illegal immigration from Mexico. Because of this, the U.S. government had to get its act together in the early 70s, passing two laws called the Arnett act and the Rodino bill, making it illegal for employers that hired illegal immigrants, getting support from Chavez and the UFW (Gutierrez 197). Chavez felt that these laws would stop the flow of illegal aliens coming from Mexico, Central America, and South America. However, enforcing these bills would have to happen, and they never were. He even went to Mexico to talk with Mexican officials, trying to persuade them to stop the flow of illegal workers that came to the United States, so they could not be employed as strikebreakers (Etulain 18). This showed Chavez as being a real warrior, having a bull-dog personality on the subject of illegal immigration, doing whatever it took to help the UFW, but his efforts were all in vain. Manuel Chavez, Cesar’s cousin, went to the U.S.-Mexican border one time in Arizona with other UFW members, taking the law into their own hands by attacking illegal aliens trying to cross into the United States (Ferriss and Sandoval 244). This incident was not ordered by Cesar, and, in fact, Manuel was actually ordered to go to Yuma, Arizona, to manage a contract dispute with citrus farmers, proving that Cesar did not know about his cousin’s plan. Cesar was genuinely a peaceful person. However, he defended his cousin, and was criticized for it by Hispanic immigrant rights groups in the U.S. Nevertheless, Chavez’s would try to make peace with Chicano immigrant rights groups, and it proved to be a difficult task.
Chavez tried to work out a solution with militant Chicano groups over the issue of illegal immigration, but failed in doing so. Jerry Cohen, Chavez’s lawyer, remarked a couple of years after Chavez’s death that: “We [Cohen and Chavez] never worked out a solution with [Chicano] immigrants rights groups…We [Cohen and Chavez] were saying we wanted immigration laws enforced, and that meant dealing with the INS, which is like dealing with the devil…” (Ibid., 243). Chicano activists had a tendency to be for open borders and illegal immigration, Chavez, having empathy for illegal workers too, tried his best to make peace with them, but, the idea of wanting immigration laws enforced fell on deaf ears to all illegal immigrant rights groups.
The record of history on Cesar E. Chavez on illegal immigration clearly showed that he was against it, wanting immigration laws enforced. He felt that illegal immigration was bad for the U.S. economy and economists will tell people that Chavez was correct. If a country has an extremely large pool of illegal aliens it will prevent legal workers to unionize, having no ability to lead a successful strike for better wages, and improve working conditions. Chavez, as leader of the UFW, fought for most of his career to stop illegal immigration, so illegal aliens could not be hired in America as strike breakers. His views against illegal aliens were purely economic and not racial. He was not against illegal immigration in the racial sense, fighting against it on terms of race would make no sense to Chavez. Nevertheless, illegal immigration continues to go on to this day, getting so out of control that illegal immigrants may become the majority in the Untied States in the future. If only the United States government had listened to Chavez early on, putting pressure on Mexico to stop illegal immigration, they would not have had this problem. However, most government officials still aren’t doing anything, repeating the same mistakes made by past American leaders over the issue of illegal immigration, having learned nothing from history.

Bibliography
1. Chavez, Cesar. Statement of Cesar E. Chavez 1969.
2. Etulain, Richard. W. Cesar Chavez: A Brief Biography with Documents.
3. Ferriss, Susan and Ricardo Sandoval. The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement.
4. Gutierrrez, David. Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity.