Congress gives immigration demonstrators nothing to celebrate

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BY SUZANNE GAMBOA / The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Immigration rights supporters marched Monday from Washington’s Hispanic neighborhoods past the White House in an event they had hoped would be a celebration of a bill to put illegal immigrants on the path to citizenship.

After that measure collapsed in the Senate last week, the march turned into a protest against a House alternative that would instead make illegal immigrants felons.

“America is a nation of immigrants. Let us stay,” read a sign carried by Jason Ayestas, 17, of Woodbridge, Va. He said he was a U.S. citizen, representing family members here illegally.

“I’m thinking about what they would do to my uncle if they catch him with us and send us to jail,” Jason said. “Basically, he wanted to come here to work with us to send money back home.”

One architect of the House measure denied that the bill would criminalize people who help illegal immigrants, and he said the protests were really an effort by the “illegal alien lobby” to win government-sanctioned amnesty.

“Amnesty is an affront to American law and America’s tradition of legal immigration,” said Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo. “If the protesters really want to honor America’s values, they would stand up to lawbreakers and embrace an enforcement-first approach to fixing our broken system.”

Thousands of immigrants, their families and supporters marched from Washington neighborhoods that are heavily Hispanic toward the White House. The crowds then converged on the National Mall.

There, Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington told the crowd, “We must still fight against racial discrimination in our land.” Then he delighted the crowd by delivering the rest of his remarks in Spanish.

Many protesters waved American flags, a change from recent protests in which more of them had held up banners representing their home countries.

“We want to be part of the solution to make this country better,” said Juan Carlos Ruiz, national coordinator for the National Capital Immigrant Coalition.

In the House, Republicans don’t appear to be wavering from their bill which is focused on tightening the U.S.-Mexican border with 700 miles of fencing and redefining the illegal immigrants already in the country as felons.

“You have to remember, illegal aliens are just that, illegal,” House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” program. “And until we begin to secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws, I don’t think we ought to be talking about a more comprehensive approach.”

As part of the “National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice,” tens of thousands were demonstrating in cities from Phoenix to Atlanta, Dallas and Pittsburgh.

President Bush has been pushing Congress to pass a temporary worker program that would let illegal immigrants have some legal status.

In remarks Monday after a speech on terrorism, Bush said, “People ought to be ... able to work on a temporary basis, and if they want to become a citizen, after a series of steps they got to take, they get in line like everybody else. Not at the head of the line, but the end of the line.”