Thread: Immigration can’t fall on backburner, advocates say

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Pilsen students speak out at May Day march
Immigration can’t fall on backburner, advocates say

By MICAH MAIDENBERG
Editor

Wednesday, May 07, 2008


The May Day immigrant rights movement seeks "Legalization for all."
Photos by MICAH MAIDENBERG/Staff


Immigrants and their advocates marched through the West Loop last Thursday. An estimated 12 million people are living in the U.S. without legal status.

Students living and attending high school in Pilsen skipped classes last Thursday to attend the May Day march for immigrant rights.

While the same event attracted about 400,000 people two years ago, this year's event attracted 15,000 marchers, according to news accounts.

In Union Park, around 10 a.m., groups of students listened to speakers and danced on a concrete basketball court to a band playing norteña music. Flags from dozens of countries could be seen throughout the park.

Marchers arrived in cars and emerged from Green and Pink Line trains at the Ashland el stop. Vendors sold paletas, the traditional Mexican ice cream bars, chips with hot sauce and American and Mexican flags.

"We are here supporting the undocumented students because they should have the same rights as everyone else. It's very sad to see some students graduate from high schools. They graduate as valedictorians of their school, and they don't have the choice to go to the college they want," said Yazmin Velazquez, a senior at Benito Juarez High School, 2150 S. Laflin. "It is very sad to see that someone who wants to go to college is [considered] a criminal."

Velazquez, 18, said she has friends in that position. Adults are affected, too-Velazquez said longtime employees at a company in her neighborhood of Back of the Yards were recently fired because they were undocumented.

Anton Miglietta, a teacher at Rudy Lozano Community Academy, 2570 S. Blue Island, said about 100 of the school's 110 students attended the march.

"The whole school agreed to mobilize to come to the march and spent the last couple days making posters and flyers and banners," Miglietta said. "Either the students came with us or were able to sign out and go with their families. The whole school supported the principles out here."

Miglietta said the school's students have been studying their families' immigration histories throughout the school year. In June, they will their present solutions to the problem at a press conference.

"They're going to create solutions and hold a press conference to get the issue back on the table of the presidential campaigns," he said. "The presidential campaigns have dropped it out of sight, the [English] media has dropped it out of sight."

While dozens of news organizations covered the march, residents of Pilsen and Little Village could also hear about it on Radio Arte, 90.5-FM, which sent 12 student reporters to call in periodic updates to the station. Most of the reporters were the children of immigrants, said Dulce Mora, the station's director of news and public affairs.

"They feel a huge responsibility to make sure they make the best of the opportunities they have because they were born in the U.S., because they have papers their parents don't," she said. "They feel that responsibility to report accurately to make sure these stories are heard."

Some organizers and participants hoped this year's march would remind politicians and the press that illegal immigration remains an issue without resolution.

Rosi Carrasco, a march organizer who works at the Latino Organization of the Southwest in Chicago, acknowledged the event has diminished in size, but said grassroots organizations are using other tactics to push for federal legislation that would legalize the undocumented, like registering pro-immigrant voters.

"We don't want this issue to be forgotten by the politicians and legislators, and unfortunately it seems that they are not listening to what people want," Carrasco said. "People want solutions, and they are putting only enforcement out there."

Carrasco said deportation raids, carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency, has scared families. During its last fiscal year, the agency deported more than 276,000 illegal immigrants from the U.S.

"That's hurting our families," Carrasco said of the raids. "I think it is not fair for families to be afraid to go to work or drive or be afraid to be separated from their families."

Contact: mmaidenberg@chicagojournal.com

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"We don't want this issue to be forgotten by the politicians and legislators.......

Nor do we, Ms. Carrasco, and I and many like me will continue to push to keep it very, very public.