Listen César Chávez speech at the Commonwealth Club

Listen to César Chávez (Speech at the Commonwealth Club)

César Chávez and immigration

The UFW during Chávez's tenure was committed to restricting immigration. César Chávez and Dolores Huerta fought the Bracero Program that existed from 1942 to 1964. Their opposition stemmed from their belief that the program undermined U.S. workers and exploited the migrant workers. Their efforts contributed to Congress ending the bracero program in 1964. The UFW was one of the first labor unions to oppose employer sanctions — a federal law that prohibited hiring undocumented immigrants in 1973. Later during the 1980s, still under the presidency of Chávez, Dolores Huerta, the cofounder of the UFW, was key in getting the amnesty provisions in the 1986 federal immigration act.

In a few occasions, concerns that undocumented migrant labor would undermine UFW strike campaigns led to a number of controversial events which the UFW describes as anti-strikebreaking events, but which have also been interpreted as being anti-immigrant. In 1969, Chávez and members of the UFW marched through the Imperial and Coachella Valleys to the border of Mexico to protest growers' use of undocumented immigrants as strikebreakers