CAESAR CHAVEZ, 1974: And Mexico should take the initiative and stop exporting the poverty to us. They should do something about the rural economy over there.

Cesar Chavez all the way back in 1974 understood the importance of protecting America’s borders: “We don’t want Mexico exporting its poverty to us.” pic.twitter.com/MaYdP5NWJg

— Don Keith (@RealDonKeith) February 10, 2026

This question of the illegals is . . . I find very interesting. Would you say that it's at this particular moment as important as any other of the problems facing the Union?  

Oh, yes, in the last three weeks it has become, last two weeks, it has become an emergency for us.  Was an awful lot of illegals coming in by the hundreds, by the thousands, our people are not only in some of the some of the crews where there is now strike breaking.  Some of the schools are 100% illegals outright, openly with no attempt to disguise it.  And, so it's so bad now that we estimate 60 to 70% of the Farm Workers in California are the resident worker.  The citizen is out of a job because of the wetbacks. They're coming in by the thousands.  Just unbelievable.  See they're coming in with the consent of the Immigration Service which is part of the Department of Justice.  How else could they come?  We, for instance, know that if you go to Coachella, you go around the El Paso area, the secondary immigration checkpoints have been have been unmanned now for, oh, at least three, four weeks. They're closed.  They're . . . at night, they're dark.  There aren't any patrol in there.  It's, it's a gimmick.  We think that it's a prelude, the beginning to a big drive on the part of the administration and the Mexican Government to bring the Bracero Program again.  It's a vicious attack on the, on the local worker and it's just one of those things that every business thinks they can get away with, and our job is to inform the whole country what's happening together with the boycott and solve it that way.  And so the workers themselves, even though a lot of them are Mexican descendants and descendants themselves,  are very uptight, very, very worried and very mad about the illegals coming to break their strikes. It takes away their jobs.

Does that put you in and comfortable position to be to be against the illegal immigrants because they are from Mexico?  In other words, part of your, part of your program has been an appeal to equal treatment of people of Mexican origin.  

Oh, yeah, sure but we're speaking of the legal ones. You know, we don't want Mexico to export its poverty to us.  And then we pay . . . it's not their culture, it's not society in general, it's a farm worker again paying for those sins you know.  And Mexico should take the initiative and stop exporting the poverty to us.  They should do something about the rural economy over there.  And then, see it's, it's a way of breaking the strike. It's a way of demoralize in a Farm Workers.  And for instance, workers are going to ask for stamps, for food stamps.  They go, they're lining up in the offices for welfare and they're being told we can't give you a job because there are plenty of jobs, and the workers say, well, there aren't any jobs. We just came from the fields.  They won't hire us or they just laid us off because either because we're strikers or because we're members of the Union or because the Braceros, the illegals rather, the illegals, will do the job for half the money we're getting . . .