http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0327immigration0327.html

Immigration rallies put pressure on Senate

Nina Bernstein New York Times Mar. 27, 2006 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - When members of the Senate Judiciary Committee meet today to wrestle with the fate of 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, they can expect to do so against a backdrop of thousands of demonstrators, including clergy members wearing handcuffs and immigrant leaders in T-shirts that declare, "We are America."

But if recent events hold true, they will be facing more than that.

Rallies by immigrants across the nation have attracted crowds that have astonished even their organizers. More than a half-million demonstrators marched in Los Angeles on Saturday, as many as 300,000 in Chicago on March 10, and tens of thousands in Phoenix, Denver, Milwaukee and smaller cities.

The demonstrations embody a surging constituency for an overhaul of immigration laws that is being pressed as never before by immigrants, who were long thought too fearful of deportation to risk so public a display.

"It's unbelievable," said Partha Banerjee, director of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network, who was in Washington on Sunday to help plan more nationwide protests on April 10. "People are joining in so spontaneously, it's almost like the immigrants have risen. I would call it a civil rights movement reborn in this country."

What has galvanized demonstrators, especially Mexicans and other Latin Americans who predominate among undocumented immigrants, is proposed legislation, passed by the House, that would make it a felony to be in the country without proper papers, and a federal crime to aid undocumented immigrants.

The measure shows the clout of another growing force: a groundswell of anger against illegal immigration that is especially potent in border states and swing-voting suburbs where the numbers and social costs of undocumented immigrants are felt mostly acutely.

"It's an entirely predictable example of the law of unintended consequences," said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, who helped organize the Chicago rally and who said he was shocked by the size of the turnout. "The Republican Party made a decision to use illegal immigration as the wedge issue of 2006, and the Mexican community was profoundly offended."

Until the immigrant rallies, groups demanding stringent enforcement-only legislation seemed to have the upper hand in Washington. The Judiciary Committee was deluged by faxes and e-mail messages from such groups as NumbersUSA, which calls for a reduction in immigration and claims 237,000 activists nationwide, and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which has long opposed any form of legalizing undocumented immigrants, including a guest-worker program advocated by President Bush.

Dan Stein, president of the federation, acknowledged the unexpected outpouring of protesters, but downplayed its significance. "It's a lot of people by any standard," he said. "But these are a lot of people who don't vote, can't vote and certainly aren't voting Republican if they do vote."

But others, noting that foreign-born Latinos had voted for President Bush in 2004 at a 40 percent greater rate than those Latinos born in the United States, said that by pursuing the proposed legislation, Republican leaders may have squandered the party's inroads with this emerging bloc of voters and pushed them into the Democratic camp.

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that of more than 11 million undocumented immigrants, 78 percent are from Mexico or other Latin American countries. Many have children and other relatives who are U.S. citizens. Under the House measure, such family members, like other citizens including clergy, social workers and lawyers, would risk prison if they helped an undocumented immigrant remain in the United States.

"Imagine turning more than 11 million people into criminals, and anyone who helps them," said Angela Sanbrano, executive director of the Central American Resource Center of Los Angeles, an organizer of Saturday's rally there.

One of the institutions behind the protests has been the Catholic Church, which has unleashed priests and parishioners to push for the legalization of undocumented immigrants.


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