Nebraska's Mexican American Commission is trying to blunt the momentum of a Hispanic evangelical group that wants to boycott the 2010 census to create leverage for national immigration reform.

The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders is organizing a nationwide prayer rally for noon Friday that is also meant to call attention to the plight of undocumented workers and a lack of action on immigration policy at the federal level.

Angel Freytez, acting director of the Mexican American Commission in Lincoln, doesn't see failure to cooperate with census takers next year as a proper strategy.

"We are partners in the U.S. census," Freytez said Friday, "and we are advocates for the census. We want every single person to be counted. And if another organization is advocating for the opposite, then that's when we have a problem."

Responding later in the day from Washington, D.C., the coalition president said its membership of almost 300 ministers and church councils in 34 states is not willing to wait any longer for a more welcoming attitude for immigrants.

"We have 38 percent of the members of our churches who are undocumented," said the Rev. Miguel Rivera, "and 17 percent of our pastors are also undocumented."

Pressure from a wide array of Hispanic groups for immigration reform burst onto the state and national stage in April 2006. That's when thousands of marchers took to the streets of Lincoln and Omaha to call for a path to citizenship for millions who had crossed the Mexican border illegally.

But despite the efforts of former Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel and others, many of the same proposed reforms bogged down in Congress. And despite substantial Hispanic support for Barack Obama in the 2008 election, there's no sign that the new president is ready to try again.

"It is very easy for them to avoid the moral responsibility of what's correct," Rivera said of Congress. "Instead of doing what's correct, they basically look at polls."

Freytez, however, said the census should not be made into a political tool.

Population counts are meant to be a demographic tool, he said, and changes in population have a big bearing on how federal dollars are distributed. "It's monies to communities, to states, to schools and roads, and it's a win-win situation. So why not be counted?"

Rivera is not impressed by that line of thinking. He said some of the money that results from Hispanics standing up and being counted is used to hire more immigration agents. That results in more arrests and deportations, "because of a lack of status in our country."

After waiting, in vain, for something better over the eight years of the Bush presidency, "enough is enough."

Local Hispanic activist Marty Ramirez has listened to the boycott argument. He decided it fails the test of logic.

As he sees it, "that's the furthest thing we should be advocating, because it's so crucial for cities and counties and states to have an accurate count, let alone the country."

It's even more important under circumstances in which, "for decades, it's always been the premise that we've been undercounted."

At the same time, Ramirez, who described himself as "a good, practicing Catholic," said the evangelical movement among Hispanics is taking on huge proportions.

"A problem that Catholics are facing is that, literally by the tens of thousands, Latinos are fleeing the Catholic Church."

He said that's happening for "a number of reasons," including the tendency of evangelicals to reach out to undocumented people with donated clothing and other necessities in times of need.

Freytez wasn't prepared to say how immigration reform could be achieved without resorting to measures as extreme as a census boycott.

"I think immigration reform will take its natural course at the federal level," he said.

Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or ahovey@journalstar.com.