Posted on Wed, Mar. 15, 2006

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/monte ... 102840.htm

Immigrant legislation protests planned
Bill would penalize people, groups
By CLAUDIA MELƒNDEZ SALINAS
Herald Salinas Bureau

A local grass-roots movement is building to protest immigration legislation being debated in Washington that opponents say would affect the way they provide services to the immigrant community.

Today, a group of students from CSU-Monterey Bay will march in Monterey starting at 6 p.m. at Dennis the Menace Park in an attempt to bring attention to House bill 4437, which is scheduled to go to the Senate on March 27.

"There seems to be very little information out there, and we decided this would be a good way to inform the public and taking action at the same time to protest the bill," said Orlando de la Cruz, co-chairman of CSUMB MeCha, sponsor the march.

Dubbed the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, the bill would not only enact stiff sanctions for anybody caught in the country without proper immigration documentation, but would penalize people and organizations that help immigrants. Social service organizations, refugee agencies and churches could fall into this category.

"Personally, I help people in the fields, and this would directly affect me," De la Cruz said.

The march is supported by the Citizenship Project, an immigrant rights group based in Salinas, which is planning a march between Watsonville and Salinas on March 25.

"A lot of people don't know the details of the bill, and you can really say the bill is bad," said Cesar Lara, executive director of the Citizenship Project.

The March 25 protest will coincide with a Peace March making its way from Southern California and scheduled to arrive in San Francisco on March 27.

The sweeping anti-immigration bill would greatly expand the definition of "alien smuggling" to include assisting a person to remain or attempting to remain in the United States when the "offender" knows the person.

Under current law, presence in the United States without documentation is a civil violation, not a criminal act. According to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco, House bill 4437 would create a new federal crime of "unlawful presence" and would define immigration violations so broadly as to include every violation, however minor or unintentional, as a federal crime.

It would bar the entire undocumented population from the United States permanently. According to a recent study by the Pew Hispanic Center, there are an estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the United States.

In the past few weeks, calls to reject the bill, which passed in the House of Representatives in December, have been growing louder among immigrant groups as thousands made their way to the Capitol last week. More demonstrations are scheduled in the days before the bill is discussed in the Senate.

Demands to reform the country's broken immigration system have increased in the past couple of years from both sides of the political spectrum. Supporters of tougher immigration laws call for more border patrols and stricter limits on who comes to this country.

Advocates for immigrants who are here without documents would like to find a way to make their presence legal.

President Bush, who has said he would support a guest-worker program, came out in support of House Bill 4437, a measure that has gathered much momentum though there are several other immigration reform proposals being considered.

Because of its punitive nature, the bill has garnered support from anti-immigrant groups such as the Minuteman, a militia group that patrols the border and day laborer gathering centers in Southern California.

Even though anti-immigrant fervor hasn't reached Southern California's levels in Monterey County, pro-immigrant groups feel the public should know about the legislation.

"Not too many people know about it," De la Cruz said. "We have to find ways to make our voices heard."


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Claudia Meléndez Salinas can be reached at 753-6755 or cmelendez@montereyherald.com.