LA rally hits tougher immigration rules

LOS ANGELES — Filipinos joined half a million protesters who paralyzed downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, demanding amnesty for undocumented immigrants and rejection of a proposed law that would drastically tighten US immigration rules.

The bill seeks to make it a felony to be in the United States illegally and imposes new penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants.

There are an estimated 10 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in the US, including about 200,000 Filipinos.

The National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA) and the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium have called for comprehensive immigration reforms to fix what they said was "a broken system" and to reunite Filipino-American families.

"Filipinos suffer from some of the worst immigration backlogs in the world," NaFFAA spokesman Jon Melegrito said recently.

"A US citizen parent petitioning for an adult son or daughter from the Philippines must wait for 14 years before he or she can immigrate to the US. Petitioning for a brother or sister takes longer — as much as 22 years," he said.

Filipino protesters were part of a sea of people, many wearing white T-shirts and waving US flags and flags of their nations of origin, that flooded the main Los Angeles avenues in a peaceful and sometimes festive protest.

Some marchers blasted trumpets and played Mexican mariachi tunes, while others waved signs and handed out flyers detailing "immigrant rights."

"We have got to stop the approval of anti-immigrant reforms, demand a migration reform that is humane and fair, and not racist," said Javier Rodriguez of the March 25 Coalition, which organized the event.

The coalition represents dozens of pro-immigrant groups as well as farmer, labor, religious and student groups.

To the cry of "Amnesty for all!" the crowd surged towards the office of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, where they heard from the mayor and other community leaders.

At the height of the rally there were "at least 500,000 people," said Sarah Faden with the Los Angeles Police Department.

LAPD Sergeant J. Baker was stunned by the size of the crowd. "I have never seen a demonstration this big in years and years here in LA," he said.

One protest organizer, Nativo Lopez of the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), put the crowd at more than a million spread out across the city.

The rally began soon after President George W. Bush defended his plan to regularize some of the undocumented workers in his weekly radio address.

"America is a nation of immigrants, and we’re also a nation of laws. And our immigration laws are in need of reform," Bush said.

Bush wants to regularize the status of illegal workers who "fill jobs that Americans will not do."

His plan "would create a legal way to match willing foreign workers with willing American employers," he said.

Bush spoke as Congress prepares to debate a much stricter immigration reform bill that targets illegal immigrants, who account for 24 percent of farm workers, 17 percent of cleaners and 14 percent of construction workers.

The proposed law would make all undocumented immigrants criminals, require all employers to verify the immigration status of their employees, and construct a wall along much of the US-Mexico border.

The US House of Representatives has already passed the bill. In the Senate, a companion bill was introduced that also would make it a felony to be in the United States without proper immigration documents.

"We are human beings," said Juan Carlos Lopez, a Mexican construction worker at the march who migrated illegally to the United States five years ago. "We want a humane reform to immigration laws without racism that will allow us to work."

Another marcher, Guadalupe Figueroa, 52, said she has also been in the country for five years as a home cleaner. "I even pay taxes," she said. "Why are they turning on us if we do the work that they don’t want to do?"

Bush urged legislators to tone down the divisive rhetoric over immigration. A heated battle is expected at the Senate, with many Republicans saying national security concerns, not business concerns, should drive immigration reform.

At least four different immigration bills are pending with the Senate, including one which would require all illegal immigrants to leave the country within five years and re-enter legally.

Another bill would allow illegal immigrants, without leaving the US, to join a worker program and eventually be put on a path to US citizenship.

About 15 percent of the US population of nearly 300 million is of Hispanic origin, according to census figures. The number includes both recent immigrants and families who have been in the region for centuries.

In the state of California, with a population of nearly 34 million, nearly one-third are of Hispanic origin.

Los Angeles, the largest city on the US west coast, has a population of more than 9.5 million — 4.2 million of whom are of Hispanic origin, including Villaraigosa.

"Every country in the world has the right to enforce their immigration laws," Villaraigosa said in an interview with CNN. "Nobody at least is saying at this point that (the undocumented immigrants) should automatically become citizens."

The government, however, needs "to provide an avenue for earned legalization," and enforce border regulations "but do it in collaboration with our neighbors in Canada and Mexico."

Villaraigosa also noted that there are illegal immigrants in the United States "from all over the world — Canada, Ireland, many other countries." — With AFP, Jose Katigbak (STAR Washington bureau)