BY BARRY FATLAND
LOS ANGELES - Thousands of people marched through downtown Los Angeles March 9, in the first major protest against the new immigration law and welfare reform passed by the federal government last year.

Both pieces of legislation, approved with bipartisan support, deepen the attacks on workers in the United States who have come here from other countries.

Claudia, 18 years old, was at her first march, helping to hold the lead banner which read: "March for Immigrants Rights - Justice, Dignity, Human Rights for All." Many participants interviewed by Militant reporters at the demonstration wanted their last names withheld from publication.

While the majority of the protesters were Latinos of different nationalities, with many Mexican, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran flags present from start to finish, there was also a significant increase in participation from the large and growing Asian communities in the Los Angeles area.

Six busloads of senior citizens came directly to the rally site where hundreds of chairs had been set up in anticipation of their arrival. They had been organized to depart from different senior housing complexes and they represented the Chinese, Filipino, and Korean communities.

Toward the front of the march, a spirited contingent of young people organized by the Asian Pacific Islanders For Immigrants Rights and Empowerment (API FIRE), helped lead chants in English. Over the past year, API FIRE has led in organizing broad public response, from all over the world, to the growing attacks against immigrants in the United States. They organized to get the main march leaflet translated into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese and distributed in the different Asian communities throughout the area.

The demonstration was broadly publicized in the Spanish language media, with the main daily newspaper La Opinion carrying full page ads for several days prior to the march. Television and radio coverage the day before the protest helped boost the participation.

Alvaro and Rosalba from Durango, Mexico, and their two children, learned about the march by reading La Opinion. Alvaro said he called his sister to tell her about it. "I'm Mormon and it's against the rules for us to be here, but I had no other choice. We have to be able to feed our families."

Elena Sánchez, a housewife in her 40s, heard about the protest action the night before on Channel 34, a Spanish language station. It was her first demonstration.

Valentín, an older worker originally from the Mexican state of Hidalgo commented on the new legislation. "It's causing a lot of harm to the people. I've been here since 1980, but I don't have any work authorization papers."

When asked if he had applied for amnesty under the 1985 Immigration and Reform Act (IRCA) that millions took advantage of, he replied, "I had to return to Mexico because my dad got sick, like many of us who had to go back home. When he died, I couldn't go back (to Mexico.) My wife has cancer and I can't even go back to see her."

In most cases, the 1985 law denied people amnesty if they returned to their native country before the process was completed.

Justice for Janitors had a spirited contingent, and members of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees helped organize a contingent of 40 with union T- shirts and banners.

The new anti-immigrant legislation calls for doubling the number of border patrol guards from 5,000 to 10,000 over five years, in yearly increments of 1,000; denies new visas for 10 years to immigrants convicted of entering the United States illegally or overstaying a previous visa; establishes a national database and expedites the deportation process for undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes in this country; creates a telephone verification pilot program to determine the eligibility of applicants for jobs and public benefits; denies most federal benefits to immigrants without papers convicted of crimes in the United States; restricts benefits to legal immigrants by making sponsors financially responsible for a longer period of time.

The welfare reform law basically eliminates most legal resident noncitizens in this country from all federal assistance programs.

Many articles have appeared in the local media since the passage of the two major pieces of legislation, focusing on the devastating effect both will have on the elderly and children. Many retired workers who have legal residency status in the United States, who never became citizens because of a desire to return to their homeland as citizens, or who couldn't meet the English language proficiency requirements for citizenship, are now facing a total cutoff from their only source of income - a monthly government Supplemental Security Income (SSI) check.

Federal estimates are that 200,000 elderly and disabled legal resident noncitizens in California will be cut off completely from the SSI program, including almost 100,000 in Los Angeles County alone.

Sponsored by a broad coalition of forces opposed to the new anti-immigrant legislation, the march and rally represented months of weekly planning meetings by groups representing most immigrant rights social service organizations, a broad range of Latino and Asian organizations, as well as welfare rights groups and several unions. Sponsors included API-FIRE, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), One Stop Immigration, La Coordinadora '96 (the group that organized the October 12, 1996 march on Washington for Immigrant Rights), the Socialist Workers Party, Young Socialists, La Resistencia, Service Employees International Union Local 660, and many others.

Craig Honts, the Socialist Workers candidate for mayor of Los Angeles, participated in the march and rally. None of his opponents, including State assemblyman Thomas Hayden, attended.

The coalition that organized the march will continue to meet every Tuesday at 6 p.m. to plan further activities. For more information, call (213) 353-1333.  
 
 
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