Illegal Immigration: Cesar Chavez’s opposition to it

In the Observations column this week, there was an argument made both for and against what Trump’s doing with regard to illegal immigration: he’s stopped it, for the most part.

Who needs a border wall when you fly the Marines, Army troops, National Guardsmen to the southern border, and add to that, more Texas state troopers, quit the asylum deal, and border crossings are suddenly near an all-time low in modern times.

In that same Observations column, the union that iconic Civil Rights Leader Cesar Chavez helped create, LUPE, spoke out against the current deportation of illegal immigrants, suggesting that it was instead, an attack on all immigrants, both legal and illegal.

Most media outlets get it wrong, too, these days. When they say that Trump’s border plans are anti-immigrant, they so often fail to add the adjective — illegal.

After all, America is a country founded and developed by immigrants who forced the American Indian tribes onto reservations and then named sports teams after them.

In an odd disparity, however, Cesar Chavez clearly delineated between the two groups – legal immigrants and illegal immigrants. He supported legal immigrants, but wasn’t shy about his opposition to illegal immigration.

With regard to Saturday’s protest in McAllen (Observations column), instead of sticking with the facts, LUPE and other nonprofits like it are turning the narrative into one that paints all immigrants, both legal and illegal, as the same demographic.

However, in the mind of Cesar Chavez, the two were distinctly separate.

Best known for his fight to improve working conditions for farmworkers — a noble cause that included simple things like outdoor restroom availability for the migrant workers -- Chavez always had empathy for the downtrodden, but he made clear over the years that he wasn’t in favor of illegal immigration.

In other words, he could sound like Trump back in the day.

Based on multiple reports, the people currently being deported aren’t from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. Some of the crimes for which they’ve been charged include crimes against children, possession of child pornography, assault, drug trafficking, gun possessions, attempted rape.

No mass deportation, however, is underway.

Early opposition

Chavez was even opposed to the bracero program, which imported cheap labor from Mexico during the Eisenhower years.

For their offspring today, many of whom call the RGV home, however, it was a great program. People crossed the border to work and were allowed to stay.

Chavez believed that many illegal immigrants, however, were strikebreakers who undermined the UFW's efforts to enact better working conditions.

He even accused the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) of working with growers to facilitate illegal immigration, while demanding stricter immigration enforcement.

Chavez launched the 'Illegals Campaign' in the 1970s to rally public opposition to illegal immigration.

Note: All of this info can be garnered from a simple online search into the life of Cesar Chavez, a giant really among men. Like Martin Luther King, Jr., as opposed to, say, a Jesse Jackson or an Al Sharpton, both Chavez and King spoke truth to power and didn’t try to BS their followers.

The Civil Rights icon (Chavez) also marched to the Mexican border in 1969 to protest farmers using illegal aliens as strikebreakers, and the UFW members set up 'wet lines' along the Rio Grande to discourage immigrants from crossing over illegally.

Not sure where this came from, but here’s some more on Chavez: “Chavez and the United Farm Workers (UFW) were concerned about the impact of illegal immigration on farmworkers' wages and working conditions. They believed that the influx of undocumented workers willing to work for lower wages undermined their efforts to negotiate better contracts for their members.”

LUPE and other nonprofits like it can try and paint Trump’s current border actions as being a war against the migrant community as a whole, but clearly, the migrant community’s biggest champion, Cesar Chavez, saw the difference between legal immigration and illegal immigration, and he never had a hard time separating the two, fact from fiction.

The Observations column for this week: https://www.anjournal.com/observations/mcallen-protest-get-10th-street