Immigrants Rally in City, Seeking Rights, New York Times
Thousands at Queens rally seek immigrant rights, Newsday
Immigrant workers rally in NYC and demand changes, Boston Globe
Editorial: New freedom ride calls to mind some parallels, San Antonio Express-News
Letter to the editor: Indianapolis Star, Illegal immigrants don't deserve a 'ride'
Letter to the editor: Indianapolis Star, Honest, fair reporting on the Freedom Ride
Immigrants Rally in City, Seeking Rights
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
New York Times
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 schools.
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 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,"
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."
Thousands at Queens rally seek immigrant rights
Newsday
By Bart Jones
STAFF WRITER
October 5, 2003
In what organizers called the largest pro-immigrant rally in U.S. history, tens of thousands of immigrants and their supporters massed in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park yesterday to call for an overhaul of what speaker after speaker described as the nation's broken immigration system.
Joined by national church, union and civil rights leaders, organizers of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride rally called for legalizing the nation's 8 million to 10 million undocumented immigrants who work as janitors, maids, cooks and farmhands.
"We are ready to come out of the shadows. We are ready to say we are no longer afraid," said Maria Elena Durazo, national chairperson of the event and the daughter of Mexican immigrants.
Organizers said they came close to their goal of attracting 100,000 people, many of them from Latin America who proudly waved their homelands' flags and carried signs that read "No Human Being Is Illegal" and "Justice, Amnesty, Liberty." New York City police did not offer a crowd estimate.
The rally featured Cardinal Edward Egan of New York, Brooklyn's newly installed Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney and original freedom riders the Rev. James Lawson and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga). The afternoon was topped off with a concert by Haitian immigrant Wyclef Jean, a former member of the hip-hop group Fugees.
"If we unite, we can achieve many things" said Mayra Meza, 29, a native of Honduras who lives in Hempstead, in Spanish. "Immigrants are the ones who have pushed this country forward."
The rally was the culmination of a two-week cross-country caravan by 900 immigrants from 50 countries who invoked the spirit of the original freedom rides in 1961 when blacks and their white supporters traveled the South to challenge segregation on buses and in bus terminals. Some of the original freedom riders attended yesterday's event.
Yesterday, Lewis recalled how he was "left in a pool of blood in the Montgomery bus station" after the freedom riders were attacked by a white mob. He said he was supporting the immigrants' campaign because "we all are in the same boat. We were all immigrants from some place, except the native Americans."
Rally organizers contended that, in contrast to the days of Ellis Island, there is no legal way for poor, low-skilled immigrants to come to the United States, and that the U.S. economy cannot function without the labor of millions of undocumented immigrants. Critics argue that granting them legal status would reward people who entered the country illegally.
Organizers also called for more visas for family reunification and increased protection for immigrant workers. "The reality is that our current system is immoral," Bishop DiMarzio said. "While many may condemn the presence of the undocumented in our land, we willingly accept their hard labor, their contributions to our economy, and their cultural and religious spirit."
Cardinal Egan said, in English and Spanish, that undocumented workers "are all sons and daughters of one father in heaven. We cannot go on simply ignoring or tolerating the plight of these brothers and sisters."
The AFL-CIO's Sweeney noted that he is the offspring of Irish immigrants. For years, the AFL-CIO opposed an amnesty for undocumented workers, but reversed course in 2000, arguing that legalization will protect all workers' rights and wages, and bolster union membership.
Rally organizers said they hope the event will put immigration reform back on the front burner in Washington. A proposal by President George W. Bush to legalize 3 million undocumented immigrants from Mexico was derailed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"It's a whole new chapter in the debate over immigration," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the nonprofit National Immigration Forum in Washington. "What this freedom ride has done is tap into a hunger in the immigrant community to stand up, to be counted, to be visible, and to show this is a defining issue."
Immigrant workers rally in NYC and demand changes
By Angelica Medaglia and Tatsha Robertson,
Boston Globe Staff
NEW YORK -- They clean homes in Boston and Chicago and sew in factories in San Francisco. They pay taxes, but many undocumented workers are not allowed to drive or vote. For years, their tenuous status kept them from speaking out against policies they felt were unjust, but increasingly immigrant workers are making their voices heard as their numbers reach record highs in the United States.
Inspired by the Freedom Riders of the Civil Rights movement, 900 immigrant workers who traveled across the country on 18 buses to demand better treatment for immigrants and more visas for family reunification rallied yesterday in the Flushing Meadows neighborhood of Queens. They were joined by 75,000 immigrants, some of them undocumented, who came to New York to push for the legalization of immigrant workers in the United States.
"We take what immigrants contribute to our country but we give nothing in return," said Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, former chairman of the immigration committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
"I came here today because I feel in the workplace we need to have a voice," said Helen Wong of San Francisco.
Wong, 54, arrived in the United States in 1986 and worked for $1 an hour in a San Francisco garment factory. She now works in a hotel and belongs to a union. She said unions have brought about improved working conditions for some immigrant workers, but there is still a long way to go.
Immigrants accounted for more than half the growth in the labor force between 1990 and 2001, according to a Northeastern University study released last year. In March, a census survey said despite a dismal economy and security concerns along US borders, the number of foreign-born people in the United States reached 32.5 million last year, the highest level in the nation's history. Still, advocates protest that the federal government has forgotten about the problems facing immigrants since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
"There are policies, but there are failed policies. There is a system that doesn't work. That is what we are talking about, fixing a broken system," said David Koff, spokesman for the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride.
Koff said the purpose of the bus ride and rally was to push the government to put immigration issues back on the national agenda.
Massachusetts organizers recruited enough workers to fill 40 buses with Bangladeshis, Brazilians, Salvadorans, and Colombians, and travel to New York yesterday. Many of the freedom riders, such as 44 Brazilian-born workers who traveled from Allston to New York City, said they were willing to risk bringing attention to themselves, and in some cases, to their illegal status.
The Boston-based workers were given notes explaining they didn't have to speak if authorities questioned them. They were told to sing or hum if an officer asked even for their names.
Earlier yesterday morning, Neide Teixeira, 28, led her two sleepy-eyed boys out of their home in Cambridge and into a bus headed to Queens. Without legal immigration documents to stay in the country, Teixeira has managed to make a living cleaning other people's homes. By marching in the rally and riding on the bus, she hoped to tell the government that by granting her a green card and a driver license, the government would be providing her children with a better life.
"I want amnesty," she said in Portuguese of her decision to ride the bus. "I want my children to study here someday."
Ravenia Moreira, a junior from Brighton High School, dreams of becoming a dentist. But her parents are ready to move back to Brazil if her immigration status prevents her from getting a college diploma.
"Even if I pay out-of-state tuition, I don't know if I will be able to get my diploma," she said. "My school said they are going to help me, but my parents have said that if I cannot get a college diploma, then we all go back to Brazil."
Juventino Camarena of Las Vegas said stringent immigration laws that force families to separate must be reformed. Camarena, 41, remembers his own mother leaving him in Mexico when he was a child so she could work in the United States.
"My mother left for the US; I didn't know why. All of a sudden, she just disappeared," he said. "I was too young to understand."
After five years of picking strawberries and pears in a ranch in Santa Rosa, Calif., his mother returned with enough money to buy a home in Mexico. But those years without her had been a loss.
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. 2001, "thousands of immigrants have been deported," Camarena said. "In some cases they are married to a US citizen. Still, they have not been reunited with their family. . . . This is an issue dear to my heart because I lived life without my own mother."
Rafael, a 26-year-old undocumented worker from Chicago who didn't want his last name printed, said that he has lived in Illinois since he was 8 years old but that immigration backlogs and old laws have prevented him from getting a green card.
"So I have to work the jobs that nobody else wants," he said. "I do yard work, work in factories, clean houses. Because I can't get an ID, I can't go to clubs or buy a video at Blockbuster. I am virtually a prisoner, but I still want the American dream."
Editorial: New freedom ride calls to mind some parallels
San Antonio Express-News
Web Posted : 10/05/2003 12:00 AM
Some four decades after brave civil rights activists rode buses into a dangerous Deep South with the aim of integrating buses and terminals, immigrant rights activists have taken a freedom ride of their own. Organizers of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride hoped to draw attention to the plight of the estimated 8 million to 10 million undocumented immigrants living and working in this nation.
The bus rides began on the West Coast and culminated in New York City on Saturday. Buses on the southern leg came through San Antonio, not long after Border Patrol agents detained the riders for four hours at a checkpoint near El Paso.
These modern-day freedom riders did not encounter the same peril the original riders faced, but their effort underscored the fact that immigrant workers deal with indignities similar to those of African Americans 40 years ago.
Before 9-11, the United States and Mexico seemed poised to reach an agreement that would help alleviate those indignities. Presidents Bush and Fox, implicitly acknowledging the symbiotic immigrant relationship that benefits both nations, talked of a guest worker arrangement and other reforms.
After 9-11, national security concerns became paramount, and talks stalled.
Now, immigration issues are bubbling back up. Senior Republican and Democratic lawmakers recently proposed an immigration reform measure that would allow an estimated 500,000 undocumented farm workers to become legal U.S. residents.
<p.Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has introduced yet another bill that would create guest worker programs for agriculture, tourism and other industries that rely on migrant workers to fill low-paying jobs that U.S. citizens spurn.The immigrant freedom riders, who included labor union members and civil rights activists, were not endorsing specific legislation, but they were raising valid concerns about immigration reform. They want to make sure that guest worker programs are not solely for the benefit of lobbies looking for an updated version of the old, discredited bracero program.
They also urge Congress to pass legislation that includes a citizenship mechanism for workers who pay taxes, new rules making it easier to reunite immigrants' families, labor law protections and respect for civil rights.
Today's freedom riders, like their predecessors, were seeking to end an unfair and exploitative two-tiered system. It's a worthy destination.
Letter to the editor: Indianapolis Star
Illegal immigrants don't deserve a 'ride'
October 5, 2003
After reading the Sept. 30 article "Immigrant workers seek dignity, respect for all," I had to respond. In what other country but America could people have a freedom ride for the rights of non-Americans?
If they are here legally, fine. But to demand rights for the ones who are not is beyond belief. I am a Vietnam veteran who fought for rights and freedom, but not for someone to demand it for people the Immigration and Naturalization Service should be arresting and sending back to their own countries.
Steven D. Fricke
Franklin
Letter to the editor: Indianapolis Star
Honest, fair reporting on the Freedom Ride
October 5, 2003
I want to commend The Star for a fair and accurate description of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride in an article on Sept. 30. Local TV stations chose either not to report on it at all or to focus more on the protesters, who were few and ineffective. Thank you for being honest and fair.
Barry D. Ostrom II
Greenwood
Immigrants' tour ends in massive rally
A record crowd closes out the freedom ride -- but immigrant rights groups say their work is just beginning.
NEW YORK - The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride bus tour, with its Miami contingent, made a final stop here and was greeted by tens of thousands of supporters at a rally billed by organizers as the largest protest for immigrant rights in U.S. history.
Carried in by hundreds of yellow buses and waving flags of their native nations, the demonstrators packed a Queens park that was the site of the World Fair in 1939 and 1964.
The rally was the culmination of a national bus tour modeled after the ''freedom rides'' of the 1960s civil rights movement.
For the past two weeks, about 900 riders organized by a coalition of labor unions and immigrant-rights groups crisscrossed the country demanding the right to reunite families split by immigration laws, rights for workers despite legal status and amnesty for undocumented workers.
"I hope that President Bush sees this rally, that he knows the immigrants are united and we are here to make this country stronger," said Edith Ingunza, 47, a Peruvian immigrant who came on the bus from Miami.
The freedom rides have helped put the immigration reform issue back on the national political agenda. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, efforts by Congress and the Bush administration to improve the lot of immigrants were halted and in some cases reversed. In recent months, though, Democratic and Republican congressional lawmakers have introduced legislation that could pave the way for legal status for many undocumented farm workers and students.
Many of the riders say their efforts will continue when they return home.
"Although we are now going home, we will not stop this fight," said Ariel N?bile, an immigrant from Argentina who works as a construction worker in Miami. "We're not going to get back to Miami and just go back to our houses and that's it. We will maintain the pressure."
Buses left from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle, Boston, Houston, Minneapolis and Chicago.
Officials say the New York rally drew 75,000 people.
"Certainly it's the largest political rally in Flushing Meadows Park in memory," said New York City Commissioner of Parks and Recreation Adrian Benepe. "I can't remember a bigger one."
The rally featured music by Wyclef Jean and speeches by labor, political and religious leaders.
"In New York there are millions of men, women and children who struggle and fight as immigrants without papers," Cardinal Edward Egan, the leader of New York's Catholic Church, said in a speech delivered in Spanish. "They are the children of God. They suffer in an unacceptable way."
After finishing his two-song set, performer Wyclef Jean, who is Haitian, jumped off the stage and ran through the crowd to meet the 60 Miami bus riders, who were chanting in Creole, "Ki sa nou vle? Jistis!" -- "What do we want? Justice!"
As thousands looked on, Jean grabbed a megaphone from Miami rider Jonathan Harris and led the crowd in the chant.
"I have never in my life been more proud to be Haitian," said Alex Pena, 21, who lives in Miami and is the daughter of a Colombian and a Haitian.
For the Miami riders, who boarded the bus to go home after the rally, Saturday's event marked the end of an experience that has -- at times -- been difficult. In Immokalee, Fla., last Saturday, the Miami riders were taunted by members of a white supremacist group. On Wednesday night, in hurricane battered Virginia, many riders had to sleep on couches and on floors in the homes of strangers because hotels were full. And one rider was hospitalized in North Carolina, the victim of a nasty virus that left many on the bus with sore throats and runny noses.
"It was one hell of an experience," said Ingrid Francis, an immigrant from Jamaica who served as the unofficial bus nurse. "But it's not over. We have a major task in front of us when we get back."
Share
Immigrants Rally in City, Seeking Rights, New York Times
Thousands at Queens rally seek immigrant rights, Newsday
Immigrant workers rally in NYC and demand changes, Boston Globe
Editorial: New freedom ride calls to mind some parallels, San Antonio Express-News
Letter to the editor: Indianapolis Star, Illegal immigrants don’t deserve a ‘ride’
Letter to the editor: Indianapolis Star, Honest, fair reporting on the Freedom Ride
Immigrants Rally in City, Seeking Rights
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
New York Times
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 schools.
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 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,”
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.”
Thousands at Queens rally seek immigrant rights
Newsday
By Bart Jones
STAFF WRITER
October 5, 2003
In what organizers called the largest pro-immigrant rally in U.S. history, tens of thousands of immigrants and their supporters massed in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park yesterday to call for an overhaul of what speaker after speaker described as the nation’s broken immigration system.
Joined by national church, union and civil rights leaders, organizers of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride rally called for legalizing the nation’s 8 million to 10 million undocumented immigrants who work as janitors, maids, cooks and farmhands.
“We are ready to come out of the shadows. We are ready to say we are no longer afraid,” said Maria Elena Durazo, national chairperson of the event and the daughter of Mexican immigrants.
Organizers said they came close to their goal of attracting 100,000 people, many of them from Latin America who proudly waved their homelands’ flags and carried signs that read “No Human Being Is Illegal” and “Justice, Amnesty, Liberty.” New York City police did not offer a crowd estimate.
The rally featured Cardinal Edward Egan of New York, Brooklyn’s newly installed Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney and original freedom riders the Rev. James Lawson and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga). The afternoon was topped off with a concert by Haitian immigrant Wyclef Jean, a former member of the hip-hop group Fugees.
“If we unite, we can achieve many things” said Mayra Meza, 29, a native of Honduras who lives in Hempstead, in Spanish. “Immigrants are the ones who have pushed this country forward.”
The rally was the culmination of a two-week cross-country caravan by 900 immigrants from 50 countries who invoked the spirit of the original freedom rides in 1961 when blacks and their white supporters traveled the South to challenge segregation on buses and in bus terminals. Some of the original freedom riders attended yesterday’s event.
Yesterday, Lewis recalled how he was “left in a pool of blood in the Montgomery bus station” after the freedom riders were attacked by a white mob. He said he was supporting the immigrants’ campaign because “we all are in the same boat. We were all immigrants from some place, except the native Americans.”
Rally organizers contended that, in contrast to the days of Ellis Island, there is no legal way for poor, low-skilled immigrants to come to the United States, and that the U.S. economy cannot function without the labor of millions of undocumented immigrants. Critics argue that granting them legal status would reward people who entered the country illegally.
Organizers also called for more visas for family reunification and increased protection for immigrant workers. “The reality is that our current system is immoral,” Bishop DiMarzio said. “While many may condemn the presence of the undocumented in our land, we willingly accept their hard labor, their contributions to our economy, and their cultural and religious spirit.”
Cardinal Egan said, in English and Spanish, that undocumented workers “are all sons and daughters of one father in heaven. We cannot go on simply ignoring or tolerating the plight of these brothers and sisters.”
The AFL-CIO’s Sweeney noted that he is the offspring of Irish immigrants. For years, the AFL-CIO opposed an amnesty for undocumented workers, but reversed course in 2000, arguing that legalization will protect all workers’ rights and wages, and bolster union membership.
Rally organizers said they hope the event will put immigration reform back on the front burner in Washington. A proposal by President George W. Bush to legalize 3 million undocumented immigrants from Mexico was derailed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“It’s a whole new chapter in the debate over immigration,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of the nonprofit National Immigration Forum in Washington. “What this freedom ride has done is tap into a hunger in the immigrant community to stand up, to be counted, to be visible, and to show this is a defining issue.”
Immigrant workers rally in NYC and demand changes
By Angelica Medaglia and Tatsha Robertson,
Boston Globe Staff
NEW YORK — They clean homes in Boston and Chicago and sew in factories in San Francisco. They pay taxes, but many undocumented workers are not allowed to drive or vote. For years, their tenuous status kept them from speaking out against policies they felt were unjust, but increasingly immigrant workers are making their voices heard as their numbers reach record highs in the United States.
Inspired by the Freedom Riders of the Civil Rights movement, 900 immigrant workers who traveled across the country on 18 buses to demand better treatment for immigrants and more visas for family reunification rallied yesterday in the Flushing Meadows neighborhood of Queens. They were joined by 75,000 immigrants, some of them undocumented, who came to New York to push for the legalization of immigrant workers in the United States.
“We take what immigrants contribute to our country but we give nothing in return,” said Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, former chairman of the immigration committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“I came here today because I feel in the workplace we need to have a voice,” said Helen Wong of San Francisco.
Wong, 54, arrived in the United States in 1986 and worked for $1 an hour in a San Francisco garment factory. She now works in a hotel and belongs to a union. She said unions have brought about improved working conditions for some immigrant workers, but there is still a long way to go.
Immigrants accounted for more than half the growth in the labor force between 1990 and 2001, according to a Northeastern University study released last year. In March, a census survey said despite a dismal economy and security concerns along US borders, the number of foreign-born people in the United States reached 32.5 million last year, the highest level in the nation’s history. Still, advocates protest that the federal government has forgotten about the problems facing immigrants since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
“There are policies, but there are failed policies. There is a system that doesn’t work. That is what we are talking about, fixing a broken system,” said David Koff, spokesman for the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride.
Koff said the purpose of the bus ride and rally was to push the government to put immigration issues back on the national agenda.
Massachusetts organizers recruited enough workers to fill 40 buses with Bangladeshis, Brazilians, Salvadorans, and Colombians, and travel to New York yesterday. Many of the freedom riders, such as 44 Brazilian-born workers who traveled from Allston to New York City, said they were willing to risk bringing attention to themselves, and in some cases, to their illegal status.
The Boston-based workers were given notes explaining they didn’t have to speak if authorities questioned them. They were told to sing or hum if an officer asked even for their names.
Earlier yesterday morning, Neide Teixeira, 28, led her two sleepy-eyed boys out of their home in Cambridge and into a bus headed to Queens. Without legal immigration documents to stay in the country, Teixeira has managed to make a living cleaning other people’s homes. By marching in the rally and riding on the bus, she hoped to tell the government that by granting her a green card and a driver license, the government would be providing her children with a better life.
“I want amnesty,” she said in Portuguese of her decision to ride the bus. “I want my children to study here someday.”
Ravenia Moreira, a junior from Brighton High School, dreams of becoming a dentist. But her parents are ready to move back to Brazil if her immigration status prevents her from getting a college diploma.
“Even if I pay out-of-state tuition, I don’t know if I will be able to get my diploma,” she said. “My school said they are going to help me, but my parents have said that if I cannot get a college diploma, then we all go back to Brazil.”
Juventino Camarena of Las Vegas said stringent immigration laws that force families to separate must be reformed. Camarena, 41, remembers his own mother leaving him in Mexico when he was a child so she could work in the United States.
“My mother left for the US; I didn’t know why. All of a sudden, she just disappeared,” he said. “I was too young to understand.”
After five years of picking strawberries and pears in a ranch in Santa Rosa, Calif., his mother returned with enough money to buy a home in Mexico. But those years without her had been a loss.
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. 2001, “thousands of immigrants have been deported,” Camarena said. “In some cases they are married to a US citizen. Still, they have not been reunited with their family. . . . This is an issue dear to my heart because I lived life without my own mother.”
Rafael, a 26-year-old undocumented worker from Chicago who didn’t want his last name printed, said that he has lived in Illinois since he was 8 years old but that immigration backlogs and old laws have prevented him from getting a green card.
“So I have to work the jobs that nobody else wants,” he said. “I do yard work, work in factories, clean houses. Because I can’t get an ID, I can’t go to clubs or buy a video at Blockbuster. I am virtually a prisoner, but I still want the American dream.”
Editorial: New freedom ride calls to mind some parallels
San Antonio Express-News
Web Posted : 10/05/2003 12:00 AM
Some four decades after brave civil rights activists rode buses into a dangerous Deep South with the aim of integrating buses and terminals, immigrant rights activists have taken a freedom ride of their own. Organizers of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride hoped to draw attention to the plight of the estimated 8 million to 10 million undocumented immigrants living and working in this nation.
The bus rides began on the West Coast and culminated in New York City on Saturday. Buses on the southern leg came through San Antonio, not long after Border Patrol agents detained the riders for four hours at a checkpoint near El Paso.
These modern-day freedom riders did not encounter the same peril the original riders faced, but their effort underscored the fact that immigrant workers deal with indignities similar to those of African Americans 40 years ago.
Before 9-11, the United States and Mexico seemed poised to reach an agreement that would help alleviate those indignities. Presidents Bush and Fox, implicitly acknowledging the symbiotic immigrant relationship that benefits both nations, talked of a guest worker arrangement and other reforms.
After 9-11, national security concerns became paramount, and talks stalled.
Now, immigration issues are bubbling back up. Senior Republican and Democratic lawmakers recently proposed an immigration reform measure that would allow an estimated 500,000 undocumented farm workers to become legal U.S. residents.
<p.Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has introduced yet another bill that would create guest worker programs for agriculture, tourism and other industries that rely on migrant workers to fill low-paying jobs that U.S. citizens spurn.
The immigrant freedom riders, who included labor union members and civil rights activists, were not endorsing specific legislation, but they were raising valid concerns about immigration reform. They want to make sure that guest worker programs are not solely for the benefit of lobbies looking for an updated version of the old, discredited bracero program.
They also urge Congress to pass legislation that includes a citizenship mechanism for workers who pay taxes, new rules making it easier to reunite immigrants’ families, labor law protections and respect for civil rights.
Today’s freedom riders, like their predecessors, were seeking to end an unfair and exploitative two-tiered system. It’s a worthy destination.
Letter to the editor: Indianapolis Star
Illegal immigrants don’t deserve a ‘ride’
October 5, 2003
After reading the Sept. 30 article “Immigrant workers seek dignity, respect for all,” I had to respond. In what other country but America could people have a freedom ride for the rights of non-Americans?
If they are here legally, fine. But to demand rights for the ones who are not is beyond belief. I am a Vietnam veteran who fought for rights and freedom, but not for someone to demand it for people the Immigration and Naturalization Service should be arresting and sending back to their own countries.
Steven D. Fricke
Franklin
Letter to the editor: Indianapolis Star
Honest, fair reporting on the Freedom Ride
October 5, 2003
I want to commend The Star for a fair and accurate description of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride in an article on Sept. 30. Local TV stations chose either not to report on it at all or to focus more on the protesters, who were few and ineffective. Thank you for being honest and fair.
Barry D. Ostrom II
Greenwood
Immigrants’ tour ends in massive rally
A record crowd closes out the freedom ride — but immigrant rights groups say their work is just beginning.
BY RICHARD BRAND Miami Herald
NEW YORK – The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride bus tour, with its Miami contingent, made a final stop here and was greeted by tens of thousands of supporters at a rally billed by organizers as the largest protest for immigrant rights in U.S. history.
Carried in by hundreds of yellow buses and waving flags of their native nations, the demonstrators packed a Queens park that was the site of the World Fair in 1939 and 1964.
The rally was the culmination of a national bus tour modeled after the ”freedom rides” of the 1960s civil rights movement.
For the past two weeks, about 900 riders organized by a coalition of labor unions and immigrant-rights groups crisscrossed the country demanding the right to reunite families split by immigration laws, rights for workers despite legal status and amnesty for undocumented workers.
“I hope that President Bush sees this rally, that he knows the immigrants are united and we are here to make this country stronger,” said Edith Ingunza, 47, a Peruvian immigrant who came on the bus from Miami.
The freedom rides have helped put the immigration reform issue back on the national political agenda. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, efforts by Congress and the Bush administration to improve the lot of immigrants were halted and in some cases reversed. In recent months, though, Democratic and Republican congressional lawmakers have introduced legislation that could pave the way for legal status for many undocumented farm workers and students.
Many of the riders say their efforts will continue when they return home.
“Although we are now going home, we will not stop this fight,” said Ariel N?bile, an immigrant from Argentina who works as a construction worker in Miami. “We’re not going to get back to Miami and just go back to our houses and that’s it. We will maintain the pressure.”
Buses left from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle, Boston, Houston, Minneapolis and Chicago.
Officials say the New York rally drew 75,000 people.
“Certainly it’s the largest political rally in Flushing Meadows Park in memory,” said New York City Commissioner of Parks and Recreation Adrian Benepe. “I can’t remember a bigger one.”
The rally featured music by Wyclef Jean and speeches by labor, political and religious leaders.
“In New York there are millions of men, women and children who struggle and fight as immigrants without papers,” Cardinal Edward Egan, the leader of New York’s Catholic Church, said in a speech delivered in Spanish. “They are the children of God. They suffer in an unacceptable way.”
After finishing his two-song set, performer Wyclef Jean, who is Haitian, jumped off the stage and ran through the crowd to meet the 60 Miami bus riders, who were chanting in Creole, “Ki sa nou vle? Jistis!” — “What do we want? Justice!”
As thousands looked on, Jean grabbed a megaphone from Miami rider Jonathan Harris and led the crowd in the chant.
“I have never in my life been more proud to be Haitian,” said Alex Pena, 21, who lives in Miami and is the daughter of a Colombian and a Haitian.
For the Miami riders, who boarded the bus to go home after the rally, Saturday’s event marked the end of an experience that has — at times — been difficult. In Immokalee, Fla., last Saturday, the Miami riders were taunted by members of a white supremacist group. On Wednesday night, in hurricane battered Virginia, many riders had to sleep on couches and on floors in the homes of strangers because hotels were full. And one rider was hospitalized in North Carolina, the victim of a nasty virus that left many on the bus with sore throats and runny noses.
“It was one hell of an experience,” said Ingrid Francis, an immigrant from Jamaica who served as the unofficial bus nurse. “But it’s not over. We have a major task in front of us when we get back.”