"From the beginning in 1962, Chávez, like Galarza before him, lobbied for strict control of the US-México border, arguing that a mass of noncitizen and politically powerless workers would make it difficult to recruit US citizens to the union. They also viewed undocumented Mexican workers as strikebreakers. The UFW maintained that stance in its early years, even reporting undocumented workers to the immigration service. But by 1974, important Chicano support organizations were openly criticizing the stance, making newspaper headlines. It came to a crisis when Attorney General William B. Saxbe announced that the Justice Department would deport a million "illegal aliens" and claimed to have the full support of the UFW. The UFW backed off the stance, and Chávez wrote a letter, published in the San Francisco Examiner, denying Saxbe's claim, writing that "illegal aliens are doubly exploited, first because they are farm workers, and second because they are powerless to defend their own interests. . . . If there were no illegals being used to break our strikes, we could win those strikes overnight and then be in a position to improve the living and working conditions of all farm workers." But he promised that the United Farm Workers would support legalization for the undocumented, "our brothers and sisters." By the late 1970s, Chávez's views had changed, and he was advocating the legalization of undocumented immigrants and encouraged their inclusion in the union movement."
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Activists from the United StatesCivil rights activistsAnti-war activistsHuman rights activistsLabor activists
Original Language: English
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Sources
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Not 'A Nation of Immigrants': Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion (2021)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cesar_Chavez
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Cesar Chavez
César Estrada Chávez (31 March 1927 – 23 April 1993) was an American farm worker, labor leader and civil rights activist, who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (later the United Farm Workers union, UFW).
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