'New Civil Rights Movement' in Immigration Protests

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Organizers See 'New Civil Rights Movement' in Immigration Protests
by Niko Kyriakou
 
Published on Wednesday, March 29, 2006 by OneWorld.net
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0329-03.htm

SAN FRANCISCO - The past three weeks' nationwide protests against proposed immigration reforms considered anti-immigrant mark the rise of a new American civil rights movement, say protest groups.

Protesters' ultimate impact on the immigration debate remains to be seen. Mass protests leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq failed to dissuade legislators from giving President George W. Bush authority to take the nation to war, after all.

Even so, protest organizers said their efforts played a large part in persuading the Senate Judiciary Committee to approve a more immigrant-friendly bill Monday than the one put forward previously by the House of Representatives.

Partha Banerjee, executive director of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network, said the ongoing protests can have a greater impact yet because, like the struggle for civil rights in the mid-1900s, they represent the interests of not just one minority but all migrant groups.

''This is so effective because this is really a new civil rights movement reborn in this country,'' Banerjee told OneWorld. ''Remember, back in the 50s, the huge civil rights movement in this country was primarily about the blacks, but also about other minorities.''

''This is not just about the immigrants,'' she added. ''It's about human and civil rights, it's about all marginalized, under-privileged people in the United States.''

Last December, the House of Representatives passed the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, legislation that critics said would slam the hopes of immigrant rights advocates and the country's 11 million-odd undocumented workers. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a much more immigrant-friendly version of the legislation Monday.

Before the Senate panel voted, more than 500,000 protesters took to the streets of Los Angeles, 300,000 rose up in Chicago, and thousands more marched, went on work-and-spending strikes, or even hunger strike across the country, according to Banerjee and other protest organizers.

While most of those involved in the larger outpourings appeared to be Latino, their views resonate with large majorities of legal immigrants, according to a nationwide survey conducted by private pollsters and released Tuesday by California-based New America Media (NAM), an association of more than 700 ethnic newspapers and broadcast outlets.

Pollsters canvassed a representative sample of 800 of the 26 million U.S. residents who have gained legal entry and found that most strongly opposed Congressional proposals to criminalize and deport undocumented immigrants and authorize walls and other barriers to be built along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Members of all immigrant communities also voiced alarm over what they termed growing anti-immigrant sentiment throughout the country, according to the survey co-sponsored by the Center for American Progress and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund.

Banerjee said immigrants also had found strong allies among church and labor groups. Some of these, she added, worked closely with her organization to assemble some 200 clergy from various denominations, and more than one thousand community leaders, on Capitol Hill Monday to voice their support for immigrant rights.

In her view, that pressure should be credited with helping Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Panel to blunt the House of Representatives' assault on migrants.

Some Republicans have criticized the strident House proposals, saying these could prove disastrous to the party's hopes of building support among Latino voters.

The legislation that the Senate Judiciary Committee endorsed on Monday would legalize undocumented immigrants if they pay their back taxes, learn English, and follow a number of other requirements.

It also would offer a guest-worker program that could allow up to 400,000 immigrants per year to enter the United States legally.

In contrast, the House proposal would make it a felony to enter the United States illegally and would erect a 700-mile fence along the border with Mexico.

The full Senate is expected to debate the measure adopted by the judiciary panel over the next couple of weeks. Even if it passes, the bill will need to be reconciled with the House legislation before being sent on for Bush to sign into law.

Activists anticipate safe passage of the Senate bill but are bracing for real battle when the House of Representatives, which they describe as home to a number of virulent anti-immigration legislators, weighs compromise.

''We are really hopeful that some comprehensive solutions will come out of the Senate and we are going to keep pressure up,'' said Marissa Graciosa, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which helped organize the Chicago protest last weekend.

Graciosa said her organization wanted to ensure the legislation ultimately adopted provides ''a path to citizenship'' for undocumented immigrants so that ''people who work hard are rewarded.''

Commenting on the size of protests so far, Graciosa said the movement benefited from a diverse base of organizers.

''There were over 100 organizations that were working on this,'' she said, referring to the Chicago demonstration. ''The Spanish language deejays were really helpful in telling people that H.R. 4437 [the House immigration measure] is a horrible bill and that unless we get in the streets and tell them about it, that kind of anti-immigration policy could become reality.''

In Los Angeles, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1877, a janitor's union, provided security for the protests and coordinated around one hundred buses that dropped off protesters from around the country.

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Thousands of Students Boost US 'People Power'
 
Published on Wednesday, March 29, 2006 by Agence France-Presse
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0329-05.htm

Thousands of high school pupils across the United States boycotted classes for the third straight day, hoping to derail a proposed law that would criminalise millions of illegal immigrants.

Mainly Hispanic students in California, Nevada and Texas walked out of classes in a snowballing protest against proposed law reforms that have sparked fear and anger among US Hispanics, now the largest US minority group.

Around 11,000 students in the Los Angeles area took part in the walkout, school officials said.

"It's smaller than yesterday," said Monica Carazo of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The fresh 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 adopted by the US House of Representatives.

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.

LAUSD chief Roy Romer warned students that starting Wednesday they would be treated as truants if they did not turn up for class or if they walked out.

"It's one thing to have a spontaneous demonstration of free speech, but it's another to have continued absences. We have a legal obligation and a parent has a legal obligation to have their youngsters in school."

Police herded about 150 students off an access road leading to a major bridge, citing around 50 of them.

The city's police chief said the action was overstretching his force and posing a danger to students and traffic.

In the California town of San Diego, south of Los Angeles on the Mexican border, more than 800 students had walked out of class or boycotted school entirely, officials said.

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 in the desert gambling hub of Las Vegas in Nevada and in Texas cities, including the major hub of Dallas, as 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 a bill that would make illegal entry in the United States a crime and heavily penalise employers of undocumented workers, opening the floodwaters of protest in the Hispanic community.

But 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 hardline plans have sparked anger in the more than 32 million people of Hispanic origin living in the United States, who make up more than 12 percent of the population and wield growing political and economic clout.

Organisers of Saturday's protest in Los Angeles said they were planning a massive countrywide Latino boycott of American life on May 1 that will be dubbed "A day without Latinos or a day without immigrants."

"We are asking people not to go to school, or work, or shopping and instead to go out and protest against the racist and inhumane measures in this bill," said Nativo Lopez, president of the Mexican American Political Association.

The explosion of protests has caught the administration of President George W. Bush offguard 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.