March today in Chicago for immigrantion reform our paper is known for bad spelling!! Freudian slip??

(http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/news ... S1.article)

May 1, 2007

By RYAN PAGELOW RPagelow@scn1.com

"I'm a citizen, but I feel like I'm illegal."

That's how Josefina Macias feels about today's march for immigration reform in downtown Chicago.

Macias, owner of Quinceañera's Boutique in Waukegan, will be closing her business today to attend the rally. Originally from Zacatecas, Mexico, she has lived in the United States for 33 years.

"I want to help them," Macias said. "At least we have to try."

The immigration reform movement has inspired her to vote since she became a U.S. citizen six years ago,

"If we don't vote, we don't count," she said.

Immigrant advocates hope to recreate last year's momentum when hundreds of thousands of their supporters marched for immigration reform.

Calling for a path to citizenship for the nation's estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants and a stop to workplace immigration raids, churches, labor groups and immigrant rights groups are planning a series of rallies today culminating at a 3 p.m. rally at Grant Park, one of many around the country.

Hundreds of Lake County immigrants are planning to join the march. Armando Peña, a Waukegan painter, is a volunteer helping to organize buses for immigrants in Waukegan. Originally from Guanajuato, Mexico, Peña is an undocumented immigrant who has lived in Waukegan off and on for the past 14 years.

"We have 400 people registered," Peña said.

Legal residency for illegal immigrants like himself would mean they would be able to get an Illinois driver's license, auto insurance and not live in fear of deportation, he said.

"If there is immigration reform, they are not going to separate families and in Waukegan you will be able to get a license and not have to pay the $500 (vehicle seizure ordinance) fine if you drive," Peña said.

In March he helped charter four busloads of people from Lake County to go to Springfield to rally in support of legislation that would give driving certificates to illegal immigrants, which passed in the House and now moves to the Senate.

The march comes a week after heavily armed officers from several federal agencies locked down a strip mall in a fraudulent-document bust last Tuesday in the Little Village neighborhood in Chicago, scaring some residents and triggering an angry rally.

"It's motivated a lot of people to march," said Joel Ruiz, director of Latinos Organizados por Justicia in Round Lake. "The officers came very heavily armed. Why did they have to use such force?"

He estimates about 200 people from Round Lake, Wauconda and Mundelein will meet in Round Lake to take the train to Chicago together.

While voting is the best way for change, he said, marches are effective for legal permanent residents who cannot vote as citizens yet, as well as for undocumented immigrants who do not have a voice.

He doesn't expect the march to attract the same number of people as last year's May 1 demonstration and boycott, before reform legislation stalled in the U.S. Congress last summer. Last year's march was also in response to proposed federal legislation that would have made assisting illegal immigrants a felony.

"You have to be realistic. It's going to be a little calmer," Ruiz said.

About 200 organizations from as far as Northern Indiana, Rockford, Elgin and Joliet are participating in the march, said Jorge Mujica, a member of the March 10 Committee that was involved in the planning.

The national day of protest includes pro-immigrant rallies around the country in cities such as San Diego, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Detroit and New York.

Rick Biesada, a Lindenhurst resident who also leads the Chicago Minuteman Project, doesn't think people who entered the country illegally have the right to march or ask the government for anything. He's opposed to amnesty for illegal immigrants and would like to see them deported under current laws.

"Amnesty will only bring another million people over in the next 10 years," Biesada said. "ICE (immigration enforcement) and the FBI should go down to the federal plaza and put them in buses and start deportation proceedings."

Their jobs could be filled by those waiting in line to enter the country legally, he added.

In response to the march, a few dozen members of the Chicago Minuteman Project plan to protest today outside the office of state Sen. Emil Jones, Jr., D-Chicago, because the Senate will consider a bill later this month that would grant driving certificates to undocumented immigrants, Biesada said.