MIGRANT WATCH

Primero de Mayo: ‘A Day without Immigrants’ in the U.S.
Millions take to the streets as consumer boycotts, work stoppages paralyzed industries

“Undocumented immigrants” have many stories to tell: of families left and never seen for years or even decades, of deaths along the U.S.-Mexican desert and mountainous border due to cold and hunger, and of arrests, detentions and deportations.

By Nicanor Segovia
Bulatlat

A DAY WITHOUT IMMIGRANTS: Hundreds of thousands of protesters piled up on U.S. streets
May 1 to rally against HR4437, which seeks to criminalize undocumented immigrants

LOS ANGELES – They were many of America’s poor, tagged as “illegal immigrants” by border authorities. They were mothers who towed strollers with infants tucked inside, senior citizens in wheelchairs, schoolchildren, laborers, vegetable and fruit pickers, gardeners, restaurant dishwashers and home-givers. Many wore white shirts to symbolize peace, waving Americans flags and many more clutching flags of Mexico, El Salvador and other Latin American countries. Some sported Che Guevara shirts and banners.

They were bearing horns, tambourines, whistles and drums. A scene stealer was a group of Incas who did a ritual dance on the street as they were cheered on by the crowd. A young Mexican bore a large wooden crucifix. Several enterprising women vendors set up their handy frying equipment by the streets to sell hotdogs, hamburgers and canned sodas. Others peddled mini-flags, sombreros and colorful headbands.

About 350,000 protesters – mostly Latinos with some Americans, African Americans, Europeans and Asians including Koreans, Chinese and Filipinos – joined the morning march. It took off from the Olympic Village and rambled slowly down Broadway Avenue until it reached the Civic Center where a two-hour rally was held.

This mass of humanity called for a one-day boycott with marchers holding streamers that read “The Great American Boycott of 2006.” Other protesters brought streamers and placards as they chanted, “Legalize, don’t criminalize” and “General amnesty now!”

This was followed in the afternoon by a four-mile pilgrimage of nearly the same number of people. It started at the MacArthur Park and continued past the bustling Wilshire Boulevard, ending at the La Brea Tar Pits. They supported the Catholic Church’s no-boycott call but cried for comprehensive immigration reform.

Primero de Mayo (May 1) was commemorated in Los Angeles and other major cities of the United States as “A Day without Immigrants” in protest against House Resolution 4437 which seeks to criminalize some 12 million “undocumented immigrants” including their supporters. It also proposes to erect a 50-foot high perimeter fence along a 700-mile border shared with Mexico.

Filipino contingent

A big contingent of Filipinos joined the morning march-rally in this city led by the Justice 4 Immigrants (J4I) Filipino Coalition and Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan)-USA along with Anakbayan (People’s Youth) and the International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS). J4I and Bayan-USA also brought a large contingent in the May 1 rally in New York that had, according to independent estimates, a million rallyers. Robyn Rodriguez of J4I called the anti-immigration bills as “racist and repressive.”

There were also big turnouts in Sacramento, northern California with 30,000 protesters, as well as in San Bernardino county, with 4,000 protesters. In Chicago, 400,000 including hundreds of people from Asia, Europe and Central America took to the streets; Houston had 30,000; and Orlando, Florida, 20,000.

In many of these cities, the “Day without Immigrants” combined consumer boycotts, work stoppages and demonstrations. In California, 90 percent of truckers serving the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach did not report to work. Turning out en masse were unions representing janitors, construction laborers, drivers, hotel employees, healthcare workers and other industries. This city’s garment district was nearly deserted while shops especially along rally routes were closed and traffic rerouted creating rare, car-free midtown avenues.

In New York, blocks of businesses in all five boroughs closed in solidarity with immigrants while students walked out to join the protest rallies.

Senate bill

The May Day rallies in the United States were the latest in the series of big protests ignited by the House vote on HR 4437. The Senate is set to resume debate on its own bill that proposes a guest-worker law that would eventually legalize the presence of some “undocumented immigrants” while deporting others. This too has been opposed by pro-immigrant groups under the May 1 Great American Boycott 2006 Coalition which has pushed for full and unconditional legalization of all undocumented persons, no border walls and family reunification measures.

Conversely, many American conservatives who support the House bill and see “illegal immigrants” as a threat to their jobs even as the latter pay taxes and, as reports show, bring relief to the deflation-plagued economy. One anti-immigrant male taunted marchers in Los Angeles with a placard that said, “A Day without Criminals.” Small anti-immigrant groups notably the Minuteman Project are building barbed wire fence between Arizona and Mexico and have mobilized lobbying groups in the U.S. Congress in support of the House resolution.

Without the immigrants, however, the U.S. economy would falter. In California alone, one-third of the workforce is made up of immigrants mainly Latinos and most especially Mexicans. Of the total number of “undocumented workers,” 21 percent are in private households and the rest in food manufacturing, 14 percent; farming, 13 percent; construction, 12 percent; textile manufacturing, 12 percent; food services, 12 percent; administration and support services, 11 percent; hotels, 10 percent; and other manufacturing, 6 percent. These have pumped billions of dollars in taxes into the U.S. economy and their remittances, combined with dollars sent home by immigrant workers in other countries, have surpassed global foreign aid.

Nearly 80 percent of the “illegal immigrants” reportedly come from Mexico and the rest of Latin America while 20 percent are from Asia, Europe, Canada and other countries.

Four million Filipinos

The J4I coalition has reported that there are about four million Filipinos in the United States and of these one million are undocumented. Filipinos are the third largest group of immigrants after the Mexicans and Chinese.

Global poverty and unemployment resulting from globalization policies have driven a big number of immigrants to the United States as well as to Europe and other destinations. As free trade and other globalization policies wipe out the economies of Mexico and many other poor countries, the United States and other capitalist economies will continue to magnet immigrants many of whom, as studies reveal, are the brightest and most hard-working people in their home countries.

But “illegal immigrants” have also many stories to tell: of families left and never seen for even decades, of deaths along the U.S.-Mexican desert and mountainous border due to cold and hunger, of arrests, detentions and deportations. More and more women are crossing the border or emigrating in other ways to work as home-givers, fruit and vegetable pickers, dishwashers or as laborers in textile factories and sometimes in sweatshops in remote towns.

Singer Neil Diamond’s America helps dramatize this exodus: “Everywhere around the world / They’re coming to America. / Everytime that flag’s unfurled / They’re coming to America.” Bulatlat

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