More unions favor legalizing workers

Changes in labor force spur rethinking

By Leslie Berestein
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. March 29, 2009

The dynamics of the farm labor population have changed since César Chávez and others began organizing workers in California's fields.

In the early 1960s, a guest-worker program that had imported workers from Mexico since the days of World War II was drawing to a close. Those who were left picking crops were largely legal residents or U.S. citizens of Mexican and Filipino descent, along with working-class white and black Americans.

“Back then, probably 80 percent were documented, and about 20 percent were undocumented. Today it would be just the reverse,â€