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 News from Around the Americas | April 2006 
Two Million Join Protests as Immigrant Debate Grips US
 Andrew Gumbel & Andrew Buncombe - The Indendpent UK
| | In Dallas, marchers for immigrant rights display flags. Police estimated that up to 500,000 people participated. More demonstrations are planned nationwide today, including 21 in California. (D.J. Peters/Fort Worth Star-Telegram) |
The unprecedented wave of immigrants' rights protests sweeping the United States reached a new high yesterday as an estimated two million people took to the streets in 140 different cities around the country in an extraordinary mobilisation many supporters are likening to a second civil rights movement.
The National Day of Action took many forms including a consumer boycott by immigrants and labour stoppages. Probably the biggest demonstration took place along the National Mall in Washington where many tens of thousands gathered on a brilliant spring afternoon to listen to speeches urging unity and proclaiming the Hispanic community's love of its adopted nation. Thousands were waving flags. Some were of Latin American countries, but the overwhelming majority waved the Stars and Stripes.
"They want to have a law to make all us criminals," said Celerino Lopez, a construction worker from Oaxaca, Mexico. He and his wife crossed the desert to enter the US illegally nine years ago. He said there were no jobs or opportunities at home.
"We come here to work, we are not terrorists. I want my child to learn English and to get a job," he said.
The demonstration took place just yards from the Capitol, where Senators last week failed to reach agreement on wide-ranging immigration reform that might have offered a way for the nation's estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants to achieve legal recognition and greater security.
Politicians from both major parties have been blindsided by the protests, whose size and passion caught everyone off guard. Two weeks ago, Los Angeles saw the biggest protest in its history as half a million people took to the streets. On Sunday, up to half a million marched through the centre of Dallas, while smaller protests rocked such unlikely outposts of immigrant activism as Des Moines, Iowa, and Boise, Idaho.
The immigrants have reacted first and foremost to draconian legislation proposed by radical Republicans in the House of Representatives to criminalise anyone in the country without proper residency papers and to build a military fence along 700 miles of the 2,000-mile US-Mexico border.
But there is also a deeper feeling that in a nation of immigrants it is wrong for millions of people, whose labour is essential to the service economy, to live in the shadows, many of the woefully underpaid and at constant risk of exploitation or abrupt termination. "They are trying to make us criminals but we are not," said Kary Garcia, 17, a high school student whose parents brought her to the US seven years ago from Mexico City. "We do the jobs Americans don't want. We do the hard jobs."
Illegal immigrants pay thousands of dollars for the chance of a new life. One Salvadorian man, Roberto, said he paid $13,000 (£7,500) to smugglers two years ago to bring him and his son. "It took one month. Train, bus, everything," he said.
The protest movement has split Republicans, with radicals sticking to their aggressively anti-immigrant agenda while moderates ? including President George Bush ? have appealed for a compromise that would end the unregulated inflow of migrants across the Mexican border and establish a framework recognising the realities of the US labour market.
The Democrats, meanwhile, have largely failed to seize on the issue ? appearing more afraid of the large number of Americans who don't think immigrants should be cut any slack.
The protests have already pushed the Senate in a more progressive direction. A package that would give most, if not all, illegal immigrants a path to residency and citizenship, establish a guest worker programme and beef up security on the border came close to approval before being scuppered at the last moment.
"Neither party can afford to shrug off or ignore the surging street rallies materialising before their eyes," said Marc Cooper, a border specialist at the University of Southern California's Institute for Justice and Journalism. "They can all do the math. While the 'illegals' can't vote, they have millions of cousins, uncles and even children who can ? and will."
Across the US, "We Are America"
Maura Reynolds & Faye Fiore - LATimes
Washington - Legal and illegal, carrying signs in English and Spanish, hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters took to the streets Monday in the nation's capital and in dozens of cities around the country, spreading a sea of white T-shirts and American flags across city parks and TV screens in an effort to persuade lawmakers to grant foreign-born workers more rights.
Chanting "Si, se puede" - "Yes, we can" - and carrying signs declaring "We are America," marchers at the centerpiece rally on the National Mall in Washington said they hoped to send a message to Congress and the rest of the country that they want to be a part of the nation where they work.
"We came here to protest. They want to pass a law to treat immigrants like terrorists," said Gilberto Castro, 34, who came to the United States illegally in 1998 but now has a work permit and makes a living selling vitamins. "I would like other people to have the same opportunity, like amnesty, for other people to get their papers."
The rally in Washington, which organizers said topped 500,000 protesters, was one of dozens of pro-immigrant rallies in cities large and small nationwide.
In most places, American flags dominated the crowds, although a sprinkling of flags of other countries, including Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras, was visible. Marchers wore white T-shirts, they said, as a sign of peace.
"We love this country," said Solomon Tekle, a 40-year-old from Ethiopia who said he had been denied asylum and now works illegally on construction jobs in Baltimore. He wore a T-shirt reading "Land of the Free."
"We work, work hard. We pay taxes," Tekle said. "We need help, not to kick us out."
The rallies were the culmination of a growing immigrant rights movement that began last month in response to legislation passed in December by the House of Representatives that would make it a felony to be in the United States without a valid visa or to aid anyone who was.
Some rallies in recent weeks appeared to backfire, with Republican lawmakers and others complaining that marchers carried more Mexican flags than American, suggesting that they did not want to integrate into U.S. society.
By contrast, organizers of Monday's demonstrations appeared to make special efforts - reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and discouraging marchers from carrying flags from other countries - to send the message that immigrants want to be Americans.
Diezir Quintanilla, 15, came to the Mall with her sister and parents, all wearing T-shirts she had made: a silk-screen image of the Pilgrims reading "Your ancestors - Immigrants, too."
"They have to give us our rights," she said, explaining that while she and her sister are citizens, her parents, from Peru, are not.
Among the marchers in Washington was Flor Villazoro, a 35-year-old house cleaner from El Salvador, who planned to work a double shift Tuesday so she could attend the rally.
"I'm here working for a good future for my baby," Villazoro said in slightly awkward English, carrying her 21-month-old daughter, Melanie, in her arms. Melanie wore a white T-shirt that read, "I'm not a criminal," and carried a small American flag.
"I'm legal. But if I try to help someone who has no papers, I'm a criminal," Villazoro said. "For years I was very quiet - only work and pay taxes. Now it's necessary to protest."
There were no official estimates of the crowd in Washington. Juan Carlos Ruiz, coordinator for the National Capital Immigration Coalition, said organizers believed that there may have been more than 500,000 demonstrators. He said organizers tried to count the numbers arriving on buses and exiting the subway and lost count at 400,000.
"The Mall is full from corner to corner," Ruiz said.
By comparison, a 1969 rally opposing the Vietnam war attracted about 600,000; about 250,000 attended the 1963 civil rights protest where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. The 2004 March for Women's Lives brought an estimated 750,000 people to the Mall.
The National Park Service stopped giving official estimates after a dispute over the number attending the Million Man March in 1995; the park service said that about 400,000 were present, while independent analyses using aerial photos and grids put the figure at more than 870,000.
Crowds at the immigration rallies in other cities appeared to be smaller than in Washington, with police reporting 50,000 each in Atlanta and Phoenix and 20,000 in New York:
.In Houston, up to 10,000 marchers wearing red, white and blue followed an Uncle Sam figure through downtown streets. Catalina Del Toro, 55, waved a sign that read, "Who would cook for you, clean for you? Do you want our job?" Del Toro, who works for a cleaning service, said she crossed into Texas illegally 31 years ago but became a U.S. citizen in 1992. She said she still has a daughter and son in Mexico.
"I clean everyone's house," she said. "Some people don't want to do that job. We work here and live and should be treated fair. But we're not. That isn't right."
.In Boston, an estimated 10,000 people marched from Boston Common to Barkley Square, about a half-mile away. At the behest of a consortium of Latino churches in the area, newly installed Cardinal Sean Patrick O'Malley delivered a prayer to the immigration protesters.
"It is only reasonable that the people who maintain our economy have a fair opportunity to become citizens," said Boston City Councilor Felix Arroyo.
.In Atlanta, marchers wearing white T-shirts - many promoting Latino construction companies and businesses - gathered at Buford Highway, the main road where immigrants gather.
Samuel Rodriguez attended the march with colleagues from La Banderita tortilla factory after agreeing to work Sunday instead of Monday.
"We came here for opportunity and we work hard, but now we're being targeted," he said. "It's time for us to support each other."
Rodriguez, who moved to the United States from Mexico 14 years ago and works in the sales department of the tortilla factory, said the recent national demonstrations had motivated Georgia's Latinos to organize.
"Everyone is on the same page for the first time," he said. "It's great."
There were counterdemonstrations in some cities, including a handful of anti-immigrant protesters in Washington. Bearing a sign that read, "Keep walking, just 1,800 miles until you're home," Erin Carrington, 22, was one of a few on the National Mall. Carrington said she believed that the laws in place were effective enough and that Americans should support them.
"I think that when illegal immigrants come here and expect to have entitlements given to them just as U.S. citizens, that it's totally preposterous," she said. "There's plenty of ways to enter our country legally while respecting our laws, and people who do so end up better in the long run, anyway."
Congress is at a pivotal point in deciding whether and how to permit millions of illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship. The Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan resear?h organization in Washington, estimated last month that between 11.5 million and 12 million unauthorized migrants are in the United States.
Some proposals, including the bill passed by the House, would amount to a crackdown on illegal immigrants and those who employ them. The House measure would increase penalties on those who illegally crossed the border or overstayed visas to a felony.
Other proposals, including a Republican-drafted compromise now stalled in the Senate, would offer a path to legalization and eventual citizenship for illegal immigrants who have been in the country more than five years. More recent arrivals would have to leave the country, as least for a short period of time, to apply for legal status.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), a leading proponent of granting illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, delivered the keynote address In Washington in a mixture of English and Spanish.
"Gracias por demandar justicia para todos los inmigrantes," Kennedy said in Massachusetts-accented Spanish, drawing cheers from the crowd. "Thank you for demanding justice for all immigrants."
Kennedy, a stalwart of the civil rights movement, said the mobilization of immigrants in recent weeks recalled the efforts of African Americans to gain equal rights in the 1960s.
"More than four decades ago, near this place, Martin Luther King called on the nation to let freedom ring. Freedom did ring - and freedom can ring again," Kennedy said. "It is time for Americans to lift their voices now - in pride for our immigrant past and in pride for our immigrant future."
Contributing to this report were Times staff writers Johanna Neuman, Greg Miller and Matthew O'Rourke in Washington, Lianne Hart in Houston, Elizabeth Mehren in Boston and Jenny Jarvie and Richard Fausset in Atlanta. |
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