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 News from Around the Americas | April 2006 
Immigrant Boycott Aims to "Close" US Cities
 Dan Whitcomb - Reuters
| | Demonstrators march in a rally during the national day of action for U.S. immigration law reform in downtown Los Angeles April 10, 2006. Pro-immigration activists say a nationwide boycott and marches planned for May 1 will flood Americas's streets with millions of Latinos to demand amnesty for illegal immigrants and shake the ground under Congress as it tackles reform. (Reuters/Lucy Nicholson) |
Los Angeles - Pro-immigration activists say a nationwide boycott and marches planned for May 1 will flood Americas's streets with millions of Latinos to demand amnesty for illegal immigrants and shake the ground under Congress as it tackles reform.
But while such a massive turnout could make for the largest protests since the civil rights era of the 1960s, not all Latinos, nor their leaders, were comfortable with such militancy - fearing a backlash in Middle America.
"There will be 2 to 3 million people hitting the streets in Los Angeles alone. We're going to close down Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Tucson, Phoenix, Fresno," said Jorge Rodriguez, a union official who helped organize earlier rallies credited with rattling Congress as it debates the issue.
Immigration has split Congress, the Republican Party and public opinion. Conservatives want the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants to be classified as felons and a fence built along the Mexican border.
Others, including President George W. Bush, want a guest worker program and a path to citizenship. Most agree some reform is needed to stem the flow of poor to the world's biggest economy.
"We want full amnesty, full legalization for anybody who is here (illegally)," Rodriguez said. "That is the message that is going to be played out across the country on May 1."
Organizers of the May Day marches, which have strong support from big labor and the Roman Catholic church, vow that America's major cities will grind to a halt and its economy will stagger as Latinos walk off their jobs and skip school.
Teachers' unions in major cities have said children should not be punished for walking out of class. A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Unified School District said school principals had been told that they should not try to keep students in class but instead should walk with the children to help keep order.
In Chicago, Catholic priests have helped organize protests, sending information to all 375 parishes in the archdiocese.
CRITICS CHARGE INTIMIDATION
Chicago activists predict that the demonstrations will draw 300,000 people - compared to the 100,000 who turned out on March 10 to clog downtown streets. Minneapolis-based agribusiness giant Cargill Inc. said it will close seven meatpacking plants so workers can participate.
In New York, leaders of the May 1 Coalition said a growing number of businesses had pledged to close and allow their workers to attend a rally in Manhattan's Union Square.
But some Latinos have expressed ambivalence about the boycott and marches, saying they could stir up anti-immigrant sentiment amid an incendiary atmosphere surrounding the issue.
Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Los Angeles archdiocese, who has emerged as an outspoken champion of immigrant rights - even calling on priests to defy laws aimed at those who would help illegals - has lobbied against a walkout.
"Personally I believe we can make May 1st a 'win-win' day here in Southern California," Mahony said in a statement. "Go to work, go to school, and then join thousands of us at a major rally afterward."
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the son of a Mexican immigrant who has long fought for immigrant rights, has taken a low profile on the issue. A Villaraigosa spokeswoman said the mayor expects protesters to be "lawful and respectful" and wants children to stay in school.
Critics have accused pro-immigrant leaders of stirring up uninformed young Latinos by telling them that their parents were in imminent danger of being deported and accuse them of trying to bully Congress.
"It's intimidation," Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman volunteer border patrol group, said of the May 1 events. "It's intimidation when a million people march down main streets in our major cities under the Mexican flag."
"It angers the people you are trying to impress," he said. "This will backfire just like the Mexican flag parades backfired."
(Additional reporting by Aarthi Sivaraman in Los Angeles, Dan Trotta in New York and Michael Conlon in Chicago)
Immigrant Protest May Leave New Yorkers Hungry
Claudia Parsons - Reuters
New York - Anybody who's eaten at one of New York's many big-name restaurants may like to think the food was lovingly prepared by a celebrity chef. The reality is it was more likely made by a Mexican.
If all the city's immigrants walk off the job in a nationwide protest called for Monday against proposals to crack down on illegal immigrants, many New Yorkers will go hungry, or at least be forced to eat at home for a change.
Anthony Bourdain, author of "Kitchen Confidential" and executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles, said immigrant workers are an often invisible presence in New York restaurants.
"I really think there's a resistance to having a mestizo-looking guy walking around the dining room in a French restaurant," said Bourdain, whose own chef de cuisine, is a naturalized Mexican.
"Every time you read a restaurant review they always say 'The chef has a sure hand with the spices.' If the chef's name is widely known, the chances are it's really some Mexican guy who has a sure hand with the spices," Bourdain said.
Sean Meade, assistant manager of Colors, an upscale Manhattan restaurant cooperatively-owned by a group of immigrant workers whose colleagues were killed in a top floor restaurant in the attack on the World Trade Center, said immigrants frequently climb the ladder from dishwasher to busboy to cook.
"They do a lot of the work that many American citizens do not want to do because they think it's beneath them, they fill that void," said Meade.
DOING THE DIRTY WORK
It was unclear how many people would respond to the protest call. It was prompted by a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in December making it a felony to be in the country illegally and proposing a fence along parts of the Mexican border.
While many immigrants are working legally, a significant number are not, according to managers interviewed by Reuters at several eateries. Most asked not to be identified to avoid unwanted attention from immigration authorities.
The manager of a diner in Inwood at the northern tip of Manhattan said the industry would fall apart without illegal immigrants. "It would be a disaster," he said.
"These people work hard, they will do whatever, they sweep the floors, wash the dishes. If they go away you would have to pay Americans top dollar, and the next thing you know, a hamburger would cost $5."
The Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York which promotes workers' rights says 70 percent of the New York food workforce of 165,000 is foreign-born, and up to 40 percent of are undocumented. Workers of Chinese background are the largest group, with many Latin Americans, Arabs, Africans and Afro-Carribeans, said the center's director Saru Jayaraman.
The U.S. food services industry employs 1.6 million foreign-born workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Julee Resendez, the beverage director of Colors, likened today's immigrant experience to that of her great-grandparents who came from Mexico to work in America's cotton fields.
"Immigrants are the backbone of this country. They do the dirty work that others don't necessarily want to do."
Bourdain said immigrants were often more committed to a job than their American-born counterparts.
"If you're a white kid from a culinary school who's thrown into a busy New York in a kitchen, chances are your chef hands you over to Hector who's been there five, six, seven years, and that's who takes you under his wing," he said.
While celebrity chefs have made the industry glamorous, the bulk of the workforce has always been immigrants, he said, just like in Paris in the 1920s when eastern Europeans and other refugees staffed the most prestigious restaurants.
"Now with this added prestige, parents cheerfully send their kids off to cooking schools and then the kids get out of school and are looking to do six-month apprenticeships at one restaurant after another," Bourdain said.
"It was always a moving workforce who change jobs quickly, except for the Latinos who tend to come in and stay put."
(Additional reporting by Christine Kearney and Matthew Robinson) |
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