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 News from Around the Americas | March 2006 
Thousands of Students Boost US 'People Power' Immigration Protest
 AFP
| | Romina Barriento protests immigration policy in the fountain in front of the Dallas City Hall in Dallas Texas. High School students from all over the Dallas area left school for the second day to assemble on the front steps of City Hall. Thousands of high school pupils across the United States boycotted classes for the third straight day, hoping to derail a proposed law that would criminalize millions of illegal immigrants. (AFP/Jensen Walker) |
Thousands of high school pupils across the United States boycotted classes for the third straight day, hoping to derail a proposed law that would criminalize millions of illegal immigrants.
Mainly Hispanic students in Los Angeles and San Diego joined fellow pupils in Las Vegas and in Texas by walking out of classes in a snowballing protest against proposed immigration law reforms that have sparked fear and anger among US Hispanics, now the largest US minority group.
"At least 9,030 students have walked out in up to 24 schools," Monica Carazo, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Unified School District, told AFP.
The latest boycott came a day after more than 36,000 students stormed out of class and marched on streets and freeways across the Los Angeles area to protest the immigration bill due to be debated by the US Senate this week.
Scores of schools across the second largest US city were Tuesday put under a strict lockdown to avoid mass walkouts, but students defied the ban and even the rare event of rain did not prevent hundreds of them from taking to the streets.
One group of about 200 massed in the city's San Pedro area and began marching along rainswept roads early Tuesday, despite warnings that disciplinary action could be taken against them for skipping school.
Police herded about 150 students off an access road leading to a major bridge, citing around 50 of them, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
In San Diego south of Los Angeles on the Mexican border, more than 800 students had walked out of class or boycotted school entirely, said Jim Esterbrooks of the San Diego County Office of Education.
Thousands of other high school pupils walked out of class in large and small towns across California, the most populous US state with a population one-third Hispanic.
Similar scenes were reported around the country. Hundreds of pupils stormed out of class in the desert gambling hub of Las Vegas to protest the immigration reforms.
In Texas cities including the major hub of Dallas, the student movement against the reforms appeared to gather further steam after kicking off with a series of school walkouts last Friday.
On Saturday, 500,000 brought Los Angeles to a standstill by staging one of the biggest demonstrations in recent US history against the proposed crackdown, while 50,000 people protested on Monday in the northeastern US auto-making capital of Detroit over the issue.
The immigration reforms, backed mainly by conservative Republicans, target the more than 11 million undocumented workers living in the United States.
The US House of Representatives in December passed an immigration bill that would make illegal entry in the United States a crime and heavily penalize employers of undocumented workers, opening the floodwaters of protest in the Hispanic community.
The bill would also require employers to verify social security numbers with the Department of Homeland Security and outlaw anyone, including churches and social workers from helping illegal immigrants.
On Monday a key US Senate panel endorsed a different bill that would allow illegal workers to obtain visas, and sent the legislation to the full Senate for a likely heated debate.
The bills have sparked anger especially in the more than 32 million people of Hispanic origin living in the United States. They make up more than 12 percent of the population and wield growing political and economic clout.
The explosion of protests has caught the administration of President George W. Bush off guard and revealed a split in his Republican Party between hardline ideologists who want to expel undocumented workers and economic pragmatists who say that illegal immigrants do critical jobs that Americans refuse to take. |
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