Grand Rapids, Michigan. Yakima, Washington. Reno, Nevada. Oxnard, California… Crowds are forming in the streets and chanting, “Si, se puede! Si, se puede!” The year is 2013.

Sunday, March 31, Cesar Chavez Day, is an official holiday in only three states across America—Texas, California and Colorado—but for the better part of the past month, civil rights and labor activists have been marching for justice in the labor leader’s name across the country.

Arizona-born in the 1920s, of Mexican descent, Chavez was a tireless advocate for workers’ rights and racial equality during his lifetime. A cofounder of the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers union, Chavez and his motto “Si, se puede,” or “Yes, we can,” became the rallying cry for fair wages, and for the equal treatment of minorities in America.

Two of Chavez’s signature issues have front-and-center political standing: immigrant rights and raising the minimum wage.

In recent months, President Obama has signaled his intent to raise the federal minimum wage to $9 per hour—up from its current $7.25.

Chavez fought hard for the 1986 Reagan amnesty that made 3 million undocumented workers eligible for citizenship.

That undertaking appears to be in for a brutal fight from congressional Republicans—who, despite zero evidence to back their assertion, almost unanimously claim such an effort will be a “job killer.”

If the battle to raise the minimum wage looks intractable, it pales in comparison to a proposed path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States. The last such amnesty was signed by Ronald Reagan in 1986. That, however, was largely before xenophobia became a conservative talking point—codified nationwide via conservative news outlets.

Chavez’s own relationship with immigration issues was complicated. On the one hand, he believed strongly that all human beings have the right to work hard and better their lives. He also believed that a fair day’s work should be rewarded with a fair day’s pay. A glut of undocumented, under-the-table labor invariably undermines both worker living-wage efforts, and worker safety.

The laws and wage standards that Chavez fought to secure for the benefit of workers are undermined if undocumented workers are willing to forgo these standards on the behalf of unscrupulous employers.

Chavez, of course, recognized this, and fought hard for the 1986 Reagan amnesty that made three million undocumented workers eligible for citizenship.

During his organizing days, however, Chavez and the UFW also reported undocumented immigrants crossing the border to immigration authorities—for fear the new arrivals would serve as strikebreakers to the farms his union was trying to organize.