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Immigrants Rally in City, Seeking Rights
The New York Times ^ | October 5, 2003 | STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Posted on 10/04/2003 6:26:15 PM PDT by sarcasm

Tens of thousands of immigrants rallied in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens yesterday with the hope of promoting an immigrants' rights movement that will capture the nation's conscience the way the 1960's civil rights movement did.

Coming from Mexico, China, Haiti and many other countries, the immigrants are seeking to persuade lawmakers in Washington to, among other things, grant legal status to more than 8 million immigrants.

"America is a land of immigrants; it was built by immigrants," said Roger Toussaint, an immigrant from Trinidad who is president of New York City's Transport Workers Union. "The justice that was extended to the immigrants of the past should be extended to the immigrants of today."

Organizers estimated that about 100,000 immigrants and their supporters crowded into the park, where they rallied alongside the giant steel globe, known as the Unisphere, that was the symbol of the 1964-65 New York World's Fair.

Cardinal Edward M. Egan, the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, was welcomed with heavy applause and spoke for 10 minutes in Spanish before turning to English.

"We cannot go on simply ignoring and tolerating the plight of our brothers and sisters," Cardinal Egan said. "Families are being damaged by cruel separation and in all too many instances shameful advantage is being taken of men and women in the work force who do not have proper papers."

The rally was the final effort in a two-week campaign known as the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, in which 18 buses carrying 900 immigrants and their supporters traveled from Los Angeles, Seattle and eight other cities to Washington and New York to press their case for immigrants' rights. The effort was inspired by the 1961 Freedom Rides, in which blacks and their allies boarded buses to help end segregation in bus terminals in the South. White vigilantes severely beat some of those freedom riders and firebombed one of their buses.

"Forty-two years later, the freedom riders of 2003, you, are going to win," Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia and an organizer of the 1961 freedom rides, told the crowd. "We are one people, we are one family, we are one house, and we are not going to let anybody turn us around. We've come too far."

The rally was in many ways a multicultural festival, with salsa and reggae music, signs in Creole and Spanish, and wafting smells of tortillas and jerk chicken.

The demonstrators called for granting legal status to illegal immigrants, for creating more family reunification visas and for increased workplace protections for immigrants because they are often exploited on the job. In addition, the demonstrators called for an end to civil liberty violations against immigrants, complaining that many law-abiding immigrants have faced harassment and detentions since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In 2001, the immigrants' rights movement was gathering steam as the Mexican government worked with immigrants' groups and labor unions to persuade Congress and President Bush to grant legal status to many illegal immigrants. But the Sept. 11 attacks derailed that push because the government's focus turned to border security.

Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of the Diocese of Brooklyn said that the way immigrants have been treated was a blot on the nation's conscience. "They are often ridiculed, exploited and abused," he said to loud cheers. "This must stop, and this immoral system must be changed."

Church groups, labor unions and immigrants groups sent hundreds of buses to the rally, while many demonstrators arrived by subway and car. Chartered buses brought students from Brown, Columbia, Wesleyan, Yale and other universities and colleges.

Organizers chose Queens for the rally largely because it has so many immigrants from so many different countries and is widely seen as one of the nation's most diverse counties. At the rally, flags from Colombia, Haiti, El Salvador and other countries waved in the light drizzle.

Marian Thom, who works as a paraprofessional at a middle school in Chinatown, said she came to the rally because, "We need to do more to reunify families. And we need better jobs because immigrants have the lowest-paying jobs."

Organized labor was the rally's chief financial sponsor because unions are hoping to improve relations with immigrants, secure better working conditions and persuade many to join unions.

"The struggle of immigrant workers is our struggle," said the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s president, John J. Sweeney, whose father was an Irish immigrant. "We believe, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed, that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Critics questioned the effectiveness of the freedom ride and Flushing Meadows rally. Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a research group that favors stronger restrictions on immigration, said, "The people who would need to be persuaded to support an amnesty for illegal immigrants are Republicans, and busloads of illegal immigrants hijacking the vocabulary of the civil rights movement is not a recipe for currying favor with Republican congressmen."

Many employers, including hotels, restaurants and agricultural growers, support the immigrant rights movements, believing that granting legal status to illegal immigrants would spare employers the risk of illegally employing illegal workers. But critics of eased immigration rules warn that granting legal status to illegal immigrants will merely spur new waves of illegal immigration.

The rally's sponsors have not detailed what legislation they would like to grant legal status to illegal immigrants. But in a rally in Washington on Thursday, the sponsors voiced support for a bill that would grant legal status to more than 500,000 illegal farm workers and to illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States for five years and have graduated from American high schools.

The crowd appeared as a sea of colorful signs and shirts, that said, "No Human is Illegal," "Justicia, Amnestia, Libertad," and "Building Immigrants' Voices and Votes,"

Representative Charles Rangel, a Manhattan Democrat and head of the city's Congressional delegation, said yesterday's rally would move the nation the way the 1960's civil rights marches did. "Forty years ago we marched, we prayed, we asked for a more just America," he said. "Today you are making history. You are waking our country together."

Speaker after speaker said the rally should be the beginning and not the end of an effort, with immigrants stepping up their campaign for expanded rights and protections.

As the bus riders crossed the country, they held rallies in Tucson; Memphis; Birmingham, Ala.; Boise, Idaho; New Haven and 100 other cities.

Outside El Paso, Tex., immigration officials stopped two buses traveling from Los Angeles and threatened riders with arrest and deportation. The riders refused to show their documents, and after a three-hour stalemate, they were released, but only after union presidents, members of Congress and bishops called the Bush administration to ask that the buses be let go.

"People do want to see change in this country that gives everyone a fair break," said Maria Elena Durazo, the chairwoman of the rally. "I think it's a new day for the immigrant community."


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; News/Current Events; US: New York
KEYWORDS: illegalimmigration; illegals; immigrantlist; invasion; lawbreakers
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To: Consort
I believe that the Republicans control both the White House and Congress. That's all that is needed to implement such an operation. They're cowards.
41 posted on 10/04/2003 7:26:14 PM PDT by sarcasm (Tancredo 2004)
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To: sarcasm
They're cowards.

Then it won't happen. Do you think that the Democrats will make it happen?

42 posted on 10/04/2003 7:28:26 PM PDT by Consort
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To: Consort; sarcasm; A. Pole; sushiman; virgil; Texas_Jarhead; Free ThinkerNY; Dan from Michigan; ...
Those illegals who are here now will not be hunted down by storm troopers with killer dogs and shipped back to the border in trailers and cattle cars...won't happen.

I believe it happened once, during the Great Depression.

Of course, America is soft now.

So soft, I believe I heard that the families of those illegals who were deported during the Great Depression are bringing suit.

They will either be assimilated under our terms or under their terms....one way or another. We're talking about millions of people who will either be part of the mainstream or part of a subculture feeding the underground economy and draining the national economy. And if they are not educated or given health care, they will become unhealthy criminals preying off the rest of us to survive.

Gee.

Too bad Japan and Germany didn't figure that out.

Then all they would have had to do to win WWII, was stroll across the border, get jobs, and demonstrate.

43 posted on 10/04/2003 7:30:11 PM PDT by Age of Reason
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To: Consort
Time for a clean sweep in Washington.
44 posted on 10/04/2003 7:30:41 PM PDT by sarcasm (Tancredo 2004)
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To: sarcasm
I believe that the Republicans control both the White House and Congress. That's all that is needed to implement such an operation. They're cowards.

You are couching this in the wrong frame of thinking.

It is not a matter of cowardice or bravery. That is silly

It IS a matter of fact: Were they to live up to your expectations, they would be voted-out in the next election, to be replaced by democrats and assorted other liberals, who will undo whatever your heroes did.

So?

45 posted on 10/04/2003 7:35:24 PM PDT by Age of Reason
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To: sarcasm
Time for a clean sweep in Washington.

OK. How about Monday or Tuesday?

46 posted on 10/04/2003 7:35:27 PM PDT by Consort
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To: Age of Reason
Gee.

Is that you solution? Gee?

47 posted on 10/04/2003 7:37:33 PM PDT by Consort
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To: Age of Reason
I don't believe that voters would throw out politicians who want to enforce immigration laws.
48 posted on 10/04/2003 7:43:38 PM PDT by sarcasm (Tancredo 2004)
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To: Consort; sarcasm; A. Pole; sushiman; virgil; Texas_Jarhead; Free ThinkerNY; Dan from Michigan
Is that you solution? Gee?

Better than your idea to lay back and enjoy it.

49 posted on 10/04/2003 7:43:48 PM PDT by Age of Reason
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To: sarcasm
I don't believe that voters would throw out politicians who want to enforce immigration laws.

Politicians who would enforce immigration laws never get the chance to be thrown out of office, because they don't get elected to start with.

Remember Pat Buchanann?

And as I said above, with the help of media brainwashing, even the people here joined in demonizing the man.

50 posted on 10/04/2003 7:47:26 PM PDT by Age of Reason
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To: sarcasm
NY Daily News-10,000 were there, lets cut that in half.
51 posted on 10/04/2003 7:49:09 PM PDT by 4.1O dana super trac pak (Stop the open borders death cult)
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To: Age of Reason
I believe that Tancredo was re-elected with about 70% of the vote.
52 posted on 10/04/2003 7:50:39 PM PDT by sarcasm (Tancredo 2004)
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To: 4.1O dana super trac pak
They picked an appropriate place for their rally. Illegal aliens have turned the surrounding area into a third-world slum.
53 posted on 10/04/2003 7:51:57 PM PDT by sarcasm (Tancredo 2004)
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To: Free ThinkerNY
become? take a look around you.
54 posted on 10/04/2003 7:51:58 PM PDT by contessa machiaveli
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To: Free ThinkerNY
It's Meximerica.......
55 posted on 10/04/2003 7:53:40 PM PDT by Joe Hadenuf (I failed anger management class, they decided to give me a passing grade anyway)
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To: sarcasm; Jeff Head; Joe Brower; Travis McGee
Ok I musta slept through the process that made illegal aliens.......... "immigrants" ?

Stay Safe !

56 posted on 10/04/2003 7:56:26 PM PDT by Squantos (Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.)
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To: sarcasm
One out of how many?
57 posted on 10/04/2003 7:56:40 PM PDT by Age of Reason
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To: Age of Reason
We need many more like him. As I said - it's not political suicide to discuss border security and illegal aliens.
58 posted on 10/04/2003 8:03:34 PM PDT by sarcasm (Tancredo 2004)
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To: Consort
I don't know where you live but what you just described is happening today in our American towns and cities. This is not a matter of if it will happen, this is happening.

Are you not aware of the smugglers driving with lights out going 80 to 100 miles an hour the wrong way on the freeways killing Americans? Are you not aware of the drugs crossing the border daily that are being sold to American kids? Are you not aware of illegals stealing cars and the cars end up in Mexico or a chop shop close to the border? Are you not aware of the Mexican gangs in this country? Check out Dalton, Georgia and see what has happened there. Are you not aware of the diseases such as TB coming from Mexico? Are you not aware that the illegals have already sent back $12 billion to Mexico while American taxpayers get stuck with paying for their health care, food stamps, WIC programs, free education and free housing.

I have a legal hispanic friend here in south Texas whose health insurance rates increased last month from $500 a month to $800 a month. They have dropped their insurance and just hope nothing happens to them as their plans are to go to Mexico for health care as they cannot afford it in the US. Unreal, but happening.

Most people I know are fed up with what is happening to our country.



59 posted on 10/04/2003 8:05:03 PM PDT by texastoo
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To: Age of Reason
Better than your idea to lay back and enjoy it.

What part of what I described do you disagree with and how would you handle it?

60 posted on 10/04/2003 8:08:21 PM PDT by Consort
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