Marches, demonstrations mark Day Without Immigrants

Yawu Miller

In the Greater Boston’s predominantly Latino communities, storefronts were shuttered as business owners shut down in solidarity with the National Day Without Immigrants. In Chelsea and East Boston, more than 5,000 people marched to Chelsea City Hall in solidarity with immigrant workers.

In Boston, immigrant activists were out in force in Post Office Square for a workers’ rights rally while others were gathered at the State House.

Members of the Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Youth Committee boarded their white pickup truck and began looking for a way to bring everyone to the Boston Common, where a coalition of social justice organizations were holding an immigrant workers solidarity rally.

Despite not having a permit, the activists led more than 300 people to an impromptu rally in front of the State House before moving on to the Boston Common where in all, about 3,000 people showed up for a rally that was one of dozens held across the state and perhaps hundreds held across the country.

More than 500,000 people demonstrated in Los Angeles while hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in other major U.S. cities.

Along Washington Street in Egleston Square, business owners pulled shut their metal grates or posted signs in the window showing their solidarity with immigrant workers. Fish processing plants in New Bedford, many of which are staffed by Central American immigrants, remained closed.

“This is what a day without immigrant workers looks like,” said Alpana Mehta, a member of the International Socialist Organization, who spoke at the rally on the Common and called for immigrants to walk away from their jobs at Logan Airport and area hotels.

The mood at the rally on the Common, which was organized by a coalition of socialist organizations, was radically different from that at a Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition press conference held at the State House earlier in the day.

At the MIRA Coalition event, business leaders and representatives of the local service industry called for reform the country’s immigration policies, some calling for increased enforcement of immigration laws.

“New enforcement systems need to be implemented but should not unfairly burden employers,” said Ted Welte, president of the Metrowest Chamber of Commerce.

But even Welte later acknowledged that many industries rely on labor from undocumented laborers when asked by a reporter whether those workers were critical to the U.S. economy.

“There are no other folks who are willing to do their jobs,” he commented.

MIRA Coalition executive director Ali Noorani echoed calls made by many immigrant rights activists for amnesty for the estimated 11 million undocumented workers currently in the U.S. and a process for those workers to apply for citizenship. Noorani said such a move would bolster the wages of all workers in this country.

“From our perspective, the overall gain is much greater than any losses,” he said.

Out on the Common, Roberto Torres of Latinas and Latinos for Social Change called for permanent residency for all undocumented residents as well as a $12.50 minimum wage, a five-day work week and “true socialism for both immigrants and the poor.”

While May Day began in the 19th century as an observance of the struggle for workers rights in the United States, the observance never took root here.

But many of the immigrants who participated in Monday’s rallies come from Latin American countries where the day is regularly observed. Some waved signs bearing photographs of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara with the message “trabajadores del mundo unarse” — “workers of the world unite.”

“I’m very happy that today, May Day is one of the largest days of protest in U.S. history,” said activist Hank Gonzalez, addressing the crowd at the Common.

Immigration Facts:

There are more than 35 million people in the U.S. who were born in other countries, including an estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants. Some figures on illegal immigrants, from the Pew Hispanic Center: • Illegal immigrants make up about 5 percent of the U.S. labor force. More than nine in 10 illegal immigrant men are part of the labor force, compared with 83 percent of men born in the U.S. • Nearly two-thirds of the children in illegal immigrants’ homes were born in the United States, making them U.S. citizens. • Three in four illegal immigrants come from Latin America, a little more than half from Mexico. About a quarter enter the United States legally and overstay their visas. Some figures on all immigrants, from the private Center for Immigration Studies: • Immigration, both legal and illegal, continues to boom, with the nation’s foreign-born population hitting 35.2 million people in 2005. • About 12.1 percent of the U.S. population was born in another country, the highest percentage since 1920. • About 7.9 million people moved to the United States in the past five years, the highest such period on record. • Mexico is the largest supplier of immigrants to the United States, followed by East Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, Central America and South America.