Liberal activist group Moveon.org wasted no time after President Obama’s controversial executive action on immigration to do a fundraising and petition drive. Just hours after the President’s televised announcement that he’d be stopping the deportations of millions of illegal immigrants, MoveOn sprang into action sending out an email with the subject “Join me in thanking President Obama for doing the right thing on immigration,” that came from “Helen F. Chavez, widow of Cesar Chavez.”

It’s a bitter irony because legendary farm worker union activist, Cesar Chavez, was passionate in his hatred for illegal immigration, something that he said drove down wages and hurt workers. Chavez even turned illegal immigrants that he called ‘wetbacks’ into the government.

Of course, MoveOn mentions none of this. Their letter from Helen Chavez says:

Tonight, President Obama kept his promise to me and to the American people by using his power to help many of the immigrants who toil in our fields, make beds, clean rooms, cook meals, work in construction and manufacturing, and care for our young and elderly. They serve our country in the military. I’ve known the farm workers all my life. Like other immigrants, they take jobs most other Americans won’t take, for pay most other Americans won’t accept, and under conditions most other Americans won’t tolerate. Big parts of our economy can’t survive without immigrants.

Her late husband Cesar Chavez must be rolling in his grave. The fact that illegal immigrants take “for pay most other Americans won’t accept” was exactly why he despised them.

Chavez wasn’t just talk: he wanted the illegal immigrants gone. As author Miriam Pawel wrote in her book The Crusades of Cesar Chavez, he had an aide named Liza Hirsh work with him on what he called 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.

As the Phoenix New Times explains:

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 .”

Obama and his allies want it both ways: they want to use the name of Cesar Chavez to promote their immigration policies but their policies are 180 degrees away from anything that Chavez himself wanted. It’s cynical manipulation that hopes the audience is too ignorant of Chavez to call them on it.

More importantly than mere hypocrisy, however, is the substance of the issue: Obama’s policy is going to hurt workers and job seekers. He’s changed immigration policy at the expense of working Americans.

Don’t believe it? Just ask Cesar Chavez.