The UFW leader was no friend to illegal immigration? until he became an ethnic figurehead.
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During his prime, Chavez, a third-generation American citizen from Yuma, Arizona and Navy veteran, was an American labor leader fighting against the importation of strikebreakers from Mexico. But as power and praise went to his head, his image morphed into that of a Mexican mestizo racial emblem, the patron saint of the reconquista of Alta California by la raza.
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In 1979, Chavez bitterly testified to Congress:
? 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?
In 1969, Chavez led a march to the Mexican border to protest illegal immigration. Joining him were Sen. Walter Mondale and Martin Luther King?s successor as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Ralph Abernathy.
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In the 1980s, the UFW declined into irrelevance as it ascended into the pantheon of political correctness. Losing interest in the gritty work of organizing, the aging Chavez began to back mass immigration as he became a symbol of Latino identity politics.
Chavez?s ambivalence about immigration is also widespread among the Latino-American electorate. A 2002 survey by the Pew Hispanic Center found that 48 percent of Latino registered voters felt there were ?too many? immigrants in the U.S. today, while only 7 percent thought there were ?too few.? This shouldn?t be startling since Hispanics suffer mass immigration?s most direct consequences: lowered wages, stressed schools, and that annoying third cousin from Hermosillo who shows up uninvited and wants to sleep on the couch until he gets himself established in a few years.
Yet when the Pew interviewers immediately rephrased the question in ethnocentric terms to read, ?Thinking about Latin American immigrants who come to work in the United States,? suddenly only 21 percent of Latino voters wanted to ?reduce the number? and 36 percent wished to ?allow more.? Thus, Hispanic activists can easily arouse for their own profit understandable but irrational racial chauvinism.
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As former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge G. Castaneda has admitted, the mostly unfenced border allows Mexico?s largely white ruling class to bleed off the discontented poor rather than make the fundamental reforms necessary to fix that dysfunctional country.
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April 17th, 2006 at 10:25 am
[…] Today’s employer of illegal immigrants does not have any of the hassles experienced by slave owners. The employer of illegals offers them a very small salary and no benefits. Which means such an employer never runs the risk of going cash-flow-negative on labor costs. They can adjust wages at will, because they will always find an illegal that is willing to accept the rate. This is the reason Cesar Chavez once disliked illegal immigration. If one set of illegals tried to “strike” for better wages, the company would simply replace them with new illegals that were willing to accept the pay rate offered to them. […]
April 17th, 2006 at 10:25 am
[…] Today’s employer of illegal immigrants does not have any of the hassles experienced by slave owners. The employer of illegals offers them a very small salary and no benefits. Which means such an employer never runs the risk of going cash-flow-negative on labor costs. They can adjust wages at will, because they will always find an illegal that is willing to accept the rate. This is the reason Cesar Chavez once disliked illegal immigration. If one set of illegals tried to “strike” for better wages, the company would simply replace them with new illegals that were willing to accept the pay rate offered to them. […]
April 17th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
[…] Today’s employer of illegal immigrants does not have any of the hassles experienced by slave owners. The employer of illegals offers them a very small salary and no benefits. Which means such an employer never runs the risk of going cash-flow-negative on labor costs. They can adjust wages at will, because they will always find an illegal that is willing to accept the rate. This is the reason Cesar Chavez once disliked illegal immigration. If one set of illegals tried to “strike” for better wages, the company would simply replace them with new illegals that were willing to accept the pay rate offered to them. […]
April 17th, 2006 at 9:36 pm
[…] Today’s employer of illegal immigrants does not have any of the hassles experienced by slave owners. The employer of illegals offers them a very small salary and no benefits. Which means such an employer never runs the risk of going cash-flow-negative on labor costs. They can adjust wages at will, because they will always find an illegal that is willing to accept the rate. This is the reason Cesar Chavez once disliked illegal immigration. If one set of illegals tried to “strike” for better wages, the company would simply replace them with new illegals that were willing to accept the pay rate offered to them. […]
April 18th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
[…] Today’s employer of illegal immigrants does not have any of the hassles experienced by slave owners. The employer of illegals offers them a very small salary and no benefits. Which means such an employer never runs the risk of going cash-flow-negative on labor costs. They can adjust wages at will, because they will always find an illegal that is willing to accept the rate. This is the reason Cesar Chavez once disliked illegal immigration. If one set of illegals tried to “strike” for better wages, the company would simply replace them with new illegals that were willing to accept the pay rate offered to them. […]
April 19th, 2006 at 10:36 am
[…] Today’s employer of illegal immigrants does not have any of the hassles experienced by slave owners. The employer of illegals offers them a very small salary and no benefits. Which means such an employer never runs the risk of going cash-flow-negative on labor costs. They can adjust wages at will, because they will always find an illegal that is willing to accept the rate. This is the reason Cesar Chavez once disliked illegal immigration. If one set of illegals tried to “strike” for better wages, the company would simply replace them with new illegals that were willing to accept the pay rate offered to them. […]
May 3rd, 2006 at 3:11 pm
[…] Today’s employer of illegal immigrants does not have any of the hassles experienced by slave owners. The employer of illegals offers them a very small salary and no benefits. Which means such an employer never runs the risk of going cash-flow-negative on labor costs. They can adjust wages at will, because they will always find an illegal that is willing to accept the rate. This is the reason Cesar Chavez once disliked illegal immigration. If one set of illegals tried to “strike” for better wages, the company would simply replace them with new illegals that were willing to accept the pay rate offered to them. […]