Immigrant Lobbyists Take the Train
Revival of Bill Draws Multinational Advocates to Capital

By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 19, 2007; Page A04

The Amtrak trains arrived at Union Station yesterday afternoon, and out streamed an Iraqi refugee, a former circus performer from Chile, a nurse's assistant from Haiti and nearly 100 others at the last stop of a cross-country tour to press for new immigration laws.

Along the way, the travelers -- from nations on nearly every continent -- held rallies to tell their stories of run-ins and hassles with the U.S. immigration system and about their hope that change would come soon.

"I wait three years to get my wife to the United States," Tonio Antonioni, 32, an Iraqi refugee who hopped on the train in Tucson, said at a small rally under the burning summer sun outside the train station. "They tell me: Be patient."

The "Dreams Across America" tour began last week in San Francisco and stopped in 10 U.S. cities to pick up riders en route to Washington, where travelers plan to share their experiences with lawmakers. Participants said the trip gained urgency last week with the revival of the bipartisan Senate immigration bill, which had appeared to die earlier this month.

Although the tour included small rallies at each stop, it also displayed a shift to quieter methods for the modern immigrant rights movement, which last year mobilized major demonstrations that brought attention to the cause but that some observers say sparked a backlash. The tour's Web site, http://www.dreamsacrossamericaonline.org, offered written and video immigrant testimonies and encouraged others to upload their stories.

It was also an attempt by activists to broaden the focus of the immigration debate from illegal immigration to the general dysfunction of an overburdened immigration system. With the exception of one Baltimore high schooler, all the speakers at yesterday's rally were in the country legally.

"We have marched, we have voted and we'll continue to vote. We have come in trains; we have come in buses," said Jaime Contreras, president of the National Capital Immigration Coalition, of the immigrant, religious and labor groups that sponsored the tour. "We're here to press until we get immigration reform this year."

Antonioni, a former professional soccer player in Iraq, said he fled his homeland in 2000 after repeated beatings by men loyal to dictator Saddam Hussein's son Uday, who was angry with Antonioni for refusing to join the national team. Antonioni -- who said he changed his given name, Abdul Kadhim Khashan, after experiencing discrimination in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- returned to Iraq to marry in 2003. Now, he says, his citizenship application and his petition for his wife are stuck in the immigration system's backlog, one problem the proposed Senate bill would tackle.

Another train rider was Richmond fourth-grader Iria Gomez-Garcia, who wore several medals -- honors for her schoolwork, she said -- as she spoke to the crowd about the early morning that immigration agents came for her parents, illegal immigrants from Guatemala. Her parents escaped capture by not answering the door, she said, but she is not so sure they will next time.

"I have a dream to be a lawyer, to represent people who have no voice and young people like me who live in fear," she said. "And it was terrifying."

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