Immigration
The UFW during Chávez's tenure was committed to restricting immigration. César Chávez and Dolores Huerta fought a federal law that prohibited hiring illegal immigrants in 1973. Later during the 1980s, while Chávez was still the UFW president, Dolores Huerta, the cofounder of the UFW, was key in getting the amnesty provisions into the 1986 federal immigration act.
On a few occasions, concerns that illegal 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 illegal immigrants as strikebreakers. Joining him on the march were both Reverend Ralph Abernathy and U.S. Senator Walter Mondale.[3] In its early years, Chávez and the UFW went so far as to report illegal aliens who served as strikebreaking replacement workers, as well as those who refused to unionize, to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
In 1973, the United Farm Workers set up a "wet line" along the United States-Mexico border to prevent Mexican immigrants from entering the United States illegally and potentially undermining the UFW's unionization efforts.[9] During one such event in which Chávez was not involved, some UFW members, under the guidance of Chávez's cousin Manuel, physically attacked the strikebreakers, after attempts to peacefully persuade the illegal aliens not to cross the border failed.
