Someone tell Joe about Chavez

Oh good. Bluster and braggadocio is out, but virtue-signaling with a frisson of stupidity is back, baby!

So maybe you know – if you can see through your haze of joyous tears – that part of the Biden-redecorated Oval Office is a bust of Mexican-American labor activist Cesar Chavez. Replacing Andrew Jackson, no great loss – no, no loss at all – there.

So, you are thinking, well..of course! They’ve promised opening up an easier path to citizenship, stopping Trump’s Wall….Chavez was a Mexican-American activist. Of course it would make sense to erect him as a patron saint of this administration’s efforts!

Maybe…not?

For, of course, Chavez was…adamantly opposed to illegal immigration and the use of illegal immigrants in labor forces.

Chavez was a farm labor activist. His primary focus was organizing farm laborers into unions, protecting them against exploitation. He viewed illegal immigration as an obstacle to justice for farm laborers, and agents of wage-suppression.

Yes, Cesar Chavez referred to illegal immigrants from south of the border as wets.

O…kay.

From two very non-conservative sources. First, the alternative paper, the Phoenix New Times.

Chavez’s battle against illegal immigration and the undocumented immigrants themselves was one of his fundamental strategies in organizing farm workers.

After his success in organizing laborers and creating public awareness of horrific work conditions, by 1973 Chavez’s United Farm Workers union was broke. The activists were desperate to keep support high for its boycott of grapes and lettuce.

Chavez “seized on immigrants as the latest explanation for why the union could not win a strike,” Pawel writes.

With the help of UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta, Chavez launched the “Illegals Campaign,” which he believed was nearly as important as the boycott. He criticized President Nixon and the Border Patrol for letting in so many “wets,” as he called them.

Under the campaign, he turned the UFW into an anti-illegal-immigrant spying organization. Union volunteers became dedicated to finding and identifying undocumented immigrants working on farms — as well as those giving them aid and comfort. The information was turned over to the feds. While doing yoga “standing on his head,” Pawel writes, Chavez gave 19-year-old Liza Hirsch the job of heading up the Illegals Campaign.

“Hirsch distributed forms printed in triplicate to all union offices and directed staff members to document the presence of illegal immigrants in the fields and report them to the INS,” the books states.

Chavez believed that the campaign would help his supporters explain to the public why the boycott against grapes and lettuce wasn’t effective: Farmers were hiring illegal workers who didn’t care about the strikes or boycott.

A favorite line of Chavez’s was, “If we can get the illegals out of California, we will win the strike overnight.”

Then, from 2012, a column at the CNN site by Ruben Navarrette, Jr, blasting Obama for honoring Chavez. But, spoiler alert, Navarrette says it’s really no surprise considering (in his views) Obama’s horrible anti-immigration policies. Imagine that.

Chavez earned many titles in his life, but “champion of immigrants” was not one of them. He was primarily a labor leader who was concerned about illegal immigrants undercutting union members, either by accepting lower wages or crossing picket lines. He never pretended to be anything else, and he resisted attempts by others to widen his agenda. When he pulled workers out of the field during a strike, the last thing he wanted was to see a crew of illegal immigrant workers take away his leverage.

According to many historical accounts, Chavez ordered union members to call the Immigration and Naturalization Service and report illegal immigrants who were working in the fields so that they could be deported. Some UFW officials were also known to picket INS offices to demand a crackdown on illegal immigrants.

In the 70s, the UFW set up a “wet line” to stop undocumented Mexican immigrants from entering the United States.

On second thought….considering how the Obama administration handled the immigration question….