US immigrants mobilizing for major 'action'

In Los Angeles, Eun Sook Lee will march on behalf of Korean illegal immigrants, at least 50,000, living in southern California. On Boston Common, Punam Rogers will join other Indian émigrés, as well as business clients and students from China, Germany, and Britain. In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Ivalier Duvra will take to the streets to draw attention to Haitian newcomers who he says need refugee status.

Coming on the heels of demonstrations in several larger cities, a National Day of Action on Immigrant Rights Monday is expected to involve people in some 90 US municipalities, well above organizers' goal of 10. Described as the biggest social movement of Hispanics since the United Farm Workers of Cesar Chavez, the plans for protests, vigils, and marches include a less-visible tier of people stirred to action over American immigration policy: non-Latinos.

"If you watch TV and read the papers, you would think this [immigration reform] is primarily an issue only for Latinos or only illegals or only poor immigrants. [Monday] will show differently," predicts Abdul Malik Mujahid, a Chicago-based Islamic cleric who says 7,000 Muslims will march there Monday to protest the "climate of fear" since 9/11. "Latino organizers have done a big favor not just to themselves but to all other immigrants, as well as America itself, by standing up and saying this country's immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed. Now the rest of us must join in."

The national day of action seems to have expanded exponentially with the organizing power of the Internet. Besides demonstrations, speeches, processions, and assorted performances (from drumming to skits), groups are planning work-walkouts, product boycotts, fasting, and other measures.

Smaller cities where events are planned include Bakersfield, Calif.; Fort Myers, Fla.; Hays, Kan.; and Oxford, Ohio, and include groups as diverse as Ukrainians, Palestinians, Irish, labor, and antiwar coalitions.

"No one could have anticipated this kind of involvement even as little as six months ago," says organizer Rich Stolz of Fair Immigration Reform Movement, one of the organizing coalitions for National Action Day. "Once it got announced, it spread nationally, regionally, locally through groups which have been building relationships for years. They know this is the moment to do something unprecedented."

Organizers originally designed a broad platform they hoped would attract a wide array of immigrants - Pacific Islanders, Southeast Asians, Europeans, Africans, and Pakistanis. The specific objection is legislation, approved by the US House in December, that makes it a felony (rather than a civil offense) to be in the US illegally. But organizers are also asking for something: worker protections, civil rights measures, family reunification, and immigration reform that defines "a path to citizenship for current undocumented and future immigrants to the US."

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