I'm really surprised no one's started a thread on this yet. I definitely disagree with locking up illegal immigrants, but I can't say I disagreed with everything in the bill.

500,000 people--that's a shitload.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... -headlines

500,000 Pack Streets to Protest Immigration Bills
The rally, part of a massive mobilization of immigrants and their supporters, may be the largest L.A. has seen.
By Teresa Watanabe and Hector Becerra, Times Staff Writers
March 26, 2006

A crowd estimated by police at more than 500,000 boisterously marched in Los Angeles on Saturday to protest federal legislation that would crack down on undocumented immigrants, penalize those who help them and build a security wall along the U.S.' southern border.

Spirited but peaceful marchers — ordinary immigrants alongside labor, religious and civil rights groups — stretched more than 20 blocks along Spring Street, Broadway and Main Street to City Hall, tooting kazoos, waving American flags and chanting, "Sí se puede!" (Yes we can!).

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Attendance at the demonstration far surpassed the number of people who protested against the Vietnam War and Proposition 187, a 1994 state initiative that sought to deny public benefits to undocumented migrants but was struck down by the courts. Police said there were no arrests or injuries except for a few cases of exhaustion.

At a time when Congress prepares to crack down further on illegal immigration and self-appointed militias patrol the U.S. border to stem the flow, Saturday's rally represented a massive response, part of what immigration advocates are calling an unprecedented effort to mobilize immigrants and their supporters nationwide.

It coincides with an initiative on the part of the Roman Catholic Church, spearheaded by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles, to defy a House bill that would make aiding undocumented immigrants a felony. And it signals the burgeoning political clout of Latinos, especially in California.

"There has never been this kind of mobilization in the immigrant community ever," said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. "They have kicked the sleeping giant. It's the beginning of a massive immigrant civil rights struggle."

The demonstrators, many wearing white shirts to symbolize peace, included both longtime residents and the newly arrived, bound by a desire for a better life.

Arbelica Lazo, 40, illegally emigrated from El Salvador two decades ago but said she now owns two businesses and pays $7,000 in income taxes each year.

Jose Alberto Salvador, 33, came here illegally four months ago to find work to support the wife and five children he left behind. In his native Guatemala, he said, what little work he could find paid $10 a day.

"As much as we need this country, we love this country," Salvador said, waving both the American and Guatemalan flags. "This country gives us opportunities we don't get at home."

On Monday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to resume work on a comprehensive immigration reform proposal. The Senate committee's version includes elements of various bills, including a guest worker program and a path to legalization for the nation's 10 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants proposed by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.)

In addition, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has introduced a bill that would strengthen border security, crack down on employers of illegal immigrants and increase the number of visas for workers. Frist has said he would take his bill to the floor Tuesday if the committee does not finish its work Monday.

Ultimately, the House and Senate bills must be reconciled before a law can be passed.

President Bush has advocated a guest worker program and attracted significant Latino support for his views.

In his Saturday radio address, Bush urged all sides of the emotional debate to tone down their rhetoric, calling for a balanced approach between more secure borders and more temporary foreign workers.

Largely in response to the debate in Washington, hundreds of thousands of people in recent weeks have staged marches in more than a dozen cities calling for immigration reform.

In Denver, police said Saturday that more than 50,000 people gathered downtown at Civic Center Park next to the Capitol to urge the state Senate to reject a resolution supporting a ballot issue that would deny many government services to illegal immigrants in Colorado.

Hundreds rallied in Reno, the Associated Press reported.

On Friday, tens of thousands of people were estimated to have staged school walkouts, marches and work stoppages in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Atlanta and other cities.

In addition, several cities, including Los Angeles, have passed resolutions opposing the House legislation. At least one city, Maywood, declared itself a "sanctuary" for undocumented immigrants

Despite the significant opposition to the crackdown on illegal immigrants shown by the turnout in recent rallies, a recent Zogby poll found 62% of Americans surveyed wanted more restrictive immigration policies, and a Field Poll last month found that the majority of California voters surveyed believed illegal immigration was hurting the state.

"Polling has consistently shown that Americans don't want guest workers or amnesty," said Caroline Espinosa, spokeswoman for NumbersUSA, a Washington-based immigration control group that says its e-mail list of 1 million and 140,000-member roster of activists have more than doubled in the last year.

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Espinosa said current levels of both legal and illegal immigration would push the U.S. population to 420 million by 2050, "leading to a tremendously negative impact on the quality of life in the United States."

According to a U.S. Census Bureau survey a year ago, the nation's 35.2 million immigrants — legal and illegal — represent a record number. California led the country with nearly 10 million, constituting 28% of the state's population overall and one-third of its work force.

The swelling number of immigrants has clearly influenced the political calculus of those involved in the issue, including political and religious groups. The Republican Party, for instance, is split among those who want tougher restrictions, those who fear alienating the Latino vote and business owners who are pressing for more laborers — mostly Latin Americans — to fill blue-collar jobs in construction, cleaning, gardening and other industries.

Some Republicans fear that pushing too hard against illegal immigrants could backfire nationally, as with Proposition 187. Strong Republican support of that measure helped spur record numbers of California Latinos to become U.S. citizens and register to vote. Those voters subsequently helped the Democrats regain political control in the state.

"There is no doubt Proposition 187 had a devastating impact on the [California] Republican Party," said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican political consultant. "Now the Republicans in Congress better beware: If they come across as too shrill, with a racist tone, all of a sudden you're going to see Republicans in cities with a high Latino population start losing their seats."

The effects of the nation's growing Latino presence also are evident in religious communities. This week, for instance, the president of the 30-million-member National Assn. of Evangelicals is scheduled to issue a statement supporting immigration reform, including a guest worker program. It will be in concert with the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, conference president.

Rodriguez, whose Sacramento-based group serves the nation's 18 million evangelical Christian Latinos, said it took "a lot of persuasion" to broker the joint statement with Ted Haggard, president of the evangelicals group. Rodriguez said he warned the group that failure to support comprehensive immigration reform would have long-term political repercussions.

Latino evangelical Christians voted for Bush at a 40% higher rate than Latinos overall, he said, but they would probably turn away from conservative candidates and causes without support on immigration.

"I had to do a lot of asking: Will Hispanics ever vote for conservative candidates again, or partner with white evangelicals if they were silent while our brothers and sisters and cousins were being sent out of the county on buses?" Rodriguez said.

Churches were just one force behind Saturday's rally.

Several immigrant advocates said that the ethnic media were a significant factor in drawing crowds. News outlets repeatedly publicized it and even exhorted marchers to wear white shirts. Churches announced the rally too. Although a police spokeswoman estimated the crowd at 500,000 based on helicopter surveillance, rally organizers said it was closer to 1 million.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa briefly addressed the rally.

"We cannot criminalize people who are working, people who are contributing to our economy and contributing to the nation," Villaraigosa said.

In contrast to demonstrations 12 years ago against Proposition 187, Saturday's rally featured more American flags than those from any other country. Flag vendors were soon overwhelmed by demonstrators holding out dollar bills.

Father Michael Kennedy, a longtime immigrant advocate and pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, said that past demonstrations were more heavily Mexican or Mexican American, but the House bill had rallied protesters across religious, national and ethnic lines.

One was Korean immigrant Dae Joong Yoon, executive director of the Korean Resource Center in Los Angeles. Yoon said the Korean community was more inflamed over the House bill than Proposition 187 because it would penalize not only undocumented immigrants but also businesses that hired them and anyone who helped them.

He said the Korean-language media has intensified coverage of the House bill in recent weeks.

"The Korean community is shocked and outraged over this inhumane legislation," Yoon said. "Everybody would be affected by it."

Saw some coverage of this on the local news; a lot of the younger protesters found out about it through myspace. Talk about making use of something useless.

If this is true, then myspace has way too much power.

Everyone that hates illegal immigration hates really high produce prices even more.

As a native of Orange County, I witnessed the protests first hand and can say that I don't think that the school kids who were out have a future in political activism. I think it's a case of kids just getting caught up in a wave of temperamental radicalism that seems to be conducive to an issue like this. I mean, I can't really blame them (they're just kids-- alot of them were only 12 or 13), but these protests were probably just a collective effort to ditch school for most of the participants.

For example, I heard a soundbite on the radio from one of the protestors saying how they wanted to fight George Bush's "right wing immigration policy" and how the administration treats them "inhumanely." I mean, if they were truly cognizant of the cause they were supporting, I would think they would view Bush as a staunch ally with his Guest Worker Program (which, lets face it, is essentially an amnesty program with a more palatable name), but like I said, most of the participants were probably just caught up in the wave of excitement and jumped at the chance to ditch school.

I also think that this is another instance of political correctness running rampant and usurping the law-- these kids should have been in school, bottom line, but police and school officials were essentially rendered stagnant because it was a largely Latino demonstration, and any attempts at enforcement would have everyone calling racism.

Well, I don't know about that. I didn't like the part of Bush's plan that would demand a return to your country of origin. There should be some path to citizenship if you're a hard-working individual that doesn't want to do harm to anyone in this country.

But anyway, guess I sounded a small false alarm. Thanks for some eyewitness accounts.

Right on brother.

its all one huge cluster fuck!! its big business owners, big farmers and our own government that have created this problem, by trying to hire cheap labor over the years and looking the other way. Then you have right wing radio hacks stoking the fires and getting their listeners stirred up saying we need to kick all the illegals out. I personally dont give a fuck. Making a law to make illegals felons is fucking stupid, and making a guest worker visa program is fucking stupid. Its too late, they are here let them be fucking citizens, get em hooked on fast food and television. They will soon be totally acclimated. They will drive SUV's, wanna put their children in private schools etc. And everyone will be happy. Its just a ridiculous non-issue to take the focus off what a dumb fuck W is.

The day before the LA protest, there was a similar one in Phoenix. They expected a few thousand people, they got nearly 100,000.

The mayor was all pissed off about how it fouled up traffic. What a jackass.

Do you guys have some kind of minimum wage law over there?

Sure, but people that aren't supposed to be here create a sort of black market for labor, so to speak.

Isn't this the case for 90% of all large-scale protests/rallies?

Those kids grow up and write the history books, so that their generation is remembered as a powerful movement rather than a self-indulgent underexperienced mass, as children tend to be.

The Federal minimum is something like $5.15, but states are free to create their own minimum wages. California's is currently $6.75 I believe. Doesn't Aussie have some immigration problems of its own? But then of course all immigrants have to come by sea or by air, so y'all probably find it easier to limit it.

First, fuck these protesters for making me sit on the 405 during my first vacation in 2 years.




Robots dude. Robots could fix all. And I would rather have higher prices then slaves picking them. And don't kid yourself, these people are treated like slaves.

Lets not forget the millions of unemployed citizens in this country who could be doing that work.



It's not the least bit stupid. Making a law that says it's illegal for cops to check someone's immigration status without arresting for a crime is stupid. Look in illegal immigrants become felons, the police can remove people like MS13 members much faster.

And Hispanic kids don't become acclimated. They have the worst rates of high school graduation of any minority. From a statistical standpoint, it will be a century before they contribute what they take out of the social system (compare this to Asians who are the opposite).

An intelligent person would set up an immigration policy that sucked all the most educated and intelligent people out of other countries into this one. Unfortunately, W is a dumb fuck.

well, my point is that in most protests like those, there are always a group of people, not necessarily kids, who jumps on the bandwagon just to be part of something cool and rebellious, and not really understanding the issues at the level that they should.

Seriously, the amount of work done by illegal immigrants is so vast it would flip the economy upside down if we were somehow able to ship them all back to Guadarajara or El Salvador.

Depends who you ask, really. I'd like to think I'm a good example of how multiculturalism has succeeded here, though the old idiots on talkback radio keep bagging it out and say how much they'd like a return to the good ol days of a White Austraya.

As for illegal immigration, thousands of UK and Kiwi backpackers routinely overstay their visas and blend in. But yeah, no, like you said, there's obviously no land route for illegal migration.

I recall something about the Aussie government having trouble deciding what to do with asylum seekers and a relatively large pool of would be immigrants. (I'm doing my best to use "Aussie" improperly, but I'm concerned that this useage might actually be acceptable )