Turnout is slim for May Day immigration rallies

NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE and UNION-TRIBUNE

2:00 a.m. May 2, 2009

Immigrants turned out for May Day demonstrations across the country in much smaller numbers than last year, with marchers pointing to uneasiness about the flu scare and job worries in the recession to explain why many people stayed home.

Organizers had called for marches and rallies as a show of support for immigration overhaul legislation that President Barack Obama has said he will offer before the end of the year. But in Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and New York, among other cities, turnout was sharply lower than expected as immigrants, many of them from Mexico, said they did not feel the time was right for marching in the street.

Mexican immigrants and businesses in the nation have not seen major negative effects from the rapidly spreading flu, despite wide publicity that the illness first erupted in Mexico and has spread from there.

Mexican immigrants around the country said the fallout from the swine flu had arrived in more subtle ways, from remarks that struck them as prejudicial, to friends who declined dinner invitations without giving a reason.

In Boston, Jay Severin, a conservative radio talk show host on WTKK-FM who is known for outrageous banter, was suspended indefinitely from his afternoon show after he referred to Mexican immigrants in insulting terms, executives at the station said yesterday. In comments about the flu epidemic in recent days, Severin had called Mexicans “primitives,â€