Rocky Mountain News



Immigrant support of boycott mixed
At flea market, many unaware of weeklong protest

By Rosa Ramirez, Rocky Mountain News
March 26, 2007

Immigrants in Colorado have been asked not to wire funds to relatives in Latin America, not to purchase gasoline, not to eat out for a week.

The economic boycott - to run through next Sunday - is being led by immigrant advocates to call attention to immigrants' economic contributions and to put pressure on policymakers to pass laws that protect those living in the country illegally and provide them with a path to legalization.

Emily Parkey, a spokeswoman with the Colorado Immigrants Rights Coalition, one of the groups leading the boycott, said organizers want to show the state and businesses that immigrants, regardless of their legal status, contribute to the state's economy in the form of sales taxes, their spending and labor.

The effort is similar to a May 1, 2006, boycott, in which thousands participated by marching in cities across Colorado and the United States.

But despite the thousands of fliers distributed in Denver and cities across the state about the boycott, few immigrants seemed aware of it Sunday.

Hundreds of people, many of them Hispanic immigrants, strolled the Mile High Flea Market in Commerce City carrying bags or pushing shopping baskets with purchased items.

Agustin Dozal, 55, drove his wife, son and daughter-in-law from Greeley to the market.

"We've spent about $300," he said in Spanish. "I didn't hear anything about the boycott."

Dozal, who has lived in Colorado for 20 years and works at Swift & Co., said he supports immigration laws that would allow those living in the country to change their legal status, but doesn't believe that boycotts have been successful.

"I support it - they're my people," he said. "I stayed home last year during the (May 1) boycott. Still, you had all those raids in Greeley. (The first boycott) didn't have any impact. The president hasn't listened."

Vendor Claudia Hernandez, 46, who was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and has lived in Colorado for the past eight years, said she learned about the boycott on Spanish-language television, but she said she couldn't afford to shut down her business of selling jeans.

"Here, one has to work to survive," she said. "If you don't work, you don't eat."

Felipe Gasca, 25, a legal permanent resident from Guanajuato, Mexico, said he simply didn't want to participate after he nearly got fired from his job of five years at a pallet company for supporting last year's boycott.

"About 60 of us from work talked about staying home (on May 1, 2006)," he said. "At the end, only six supported the boycott. I almost lost my job trying to support them."

One man who is supporting the boycott is Ignacio Ramirez, an immigrant and a member of Immigrant Families of Southwest Denver. He said he withdrew all his money from his bank account and will not turn on his television as a way to support the boycott.

His only spending, he said, will be the bus fare to commute to and from work.

"I'm supporting it because I'm an immigrant and because I see that there needs to be changes in these laws," he said. "I see how my colleagues are being oppressed with the raids and with the exploitation from bosses."

Parkey said it is time for some of the big businesses that benefit from doing business with undocumented immigrants to join the reform effort.

"We have a lot of big businesses like Western Union and MoneyGram that are really benefiting from the money that undocumented immigrants pay to send money home," she said. "Yet, they are absent from the fight."

Parkey said this week's boycott is one of many scheduled activities this year aimed at generating support for pending immigration reform legislation in Congress.

Last month, a Colorado delegation traveled to Washington, D.C., and met with U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar and others to push for a comprehensive immigration reform, she said.



ramirezr@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5067

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