RE: Ruben Navarrette‘s “Obama medal turns to sop for election,” Other Views, June 6:

The column noted that Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the organization that became the United Farm Workers, was recently given the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Acknowledging his own run-ins with Huerta, Navarrette added that the United Farm Workers once worked hand-in-hand with U.S. immigration officials to deport illegal immigrant workers that the union saw as a threat.

His innuendos and half- truths need to be clarified.

César Chávez and the United Farm Workers were champions of immigration reform. Under Chavez, the UFW opposed making it illegal for employers to hire undocumented workers long before most labor groups acted.

The UFW helped enact the amnesty provision of the 1986 immigration law through which 1 million farm workers became legal residents. Huerta played a crucial role in that effort.

Navarrette should check the facts before he states his opinions.

The UFW has demonstrated a consistent commitment to immigration reform going back more than 40 years.

Chavez and Huerta worked for years against the infamous Bracero Program that exploited domestic farm workers who were denied jobs and replaced by imported farm workers who were abused by growers. In part through their efforts, Congress ended the program in 1964.

Decades before most labor organizations acted, the UFW became one of the first unions to oppose “employer sanctions” that made it illegal to hire undocumented workers.

The UFW spent years negotiating with the nation’s agricultural industry to create the historic bipartisan AGJobs bill allowing undocumented farm workers in this country to earn the legal right to permanently stay here by continuing to work in agriculture.

Immigration reform is separate and distinct from the issue of strikebreaking. No one has the right to be a strikebreaker. No legitimate union permits its strikes to be broken by anyone, regardless of race, origin or nationality.

Ironically, in past years, those strikers on UFW picket lines most vocal in demanding immigration authorities remove undocumented scabs (or strikebreakers) in the fields were themselves undocumented.

The UFW has always organized undocumented workers, accepting the workforce as it exists. When there were calls in the early ’70s for the union to check the legal status of workers at ranches under UFW contract, Cesar refused.

Jaime P. Martinez is board chairman of the Cesar E. Chavez Legacy and Educational Foundation