Freedom's journey

In cross-country bus ride, immigrants seek to change their plight

By Monica Rhor, Globe Staff, 9/23/2003

Cruz Hernandez seems an unlikely agitator. The 65-year-old Peruvian speaks softly, her face framed by snow-white hair, her eyes turning sad when she talks about the children and grandchildren who remain in her homeland.

At an age when most people are easing into retirement, Hernandez works two jobs, leaving her Chelsea apartment every day just after 6 a.m. and returning close to midnight, only to feel her heart drop at the emptiness waiting behind her door.

Although she is a legal immigrant, Hernandez may have to wait a decade longer before US officials grant her family permission to immigrate here.

"My dream is to bring my children here," said Hernandez, speaking in Spanish. "For that, I am fighting. Basta ya! [Enough already]." So, on Sept. 29, Cruz Hernandez, a madre gallina (mother hen) longing for her brood, will become Cruz Hernandez, Freedom Rider -- one of 800 immigrants who will board 18 buses in 10 cities, including Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Houston, and fan out across the United States as part of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride.

The cross-country caravan, which is patterned after the freedom rides of the civil rights movement, leads up to an Oct. 4 rally in New York, expected to draw more than 150,000 people. Both are part of an increasingly vocal movement calling for the legalization of millions of undocumented immigrants.

Organizers, who include labor unions, immigrant rights groups, and civil rights organizations, say the Freedom Ride is a chance to show politicians, policy makers and mainstream America the real face of immigration and offer living examples of problems caused by current immigration laws.

Some of the Freedom Riders will be people like Hernandez, who waited 12 years for a visa to enter this country three years ago. She represents permanent residents or naturalized citizens lobbying for laws that would speed up reunification of families.

Other riders are refugees with temporary visas and are calling for laws that would remove barriers to the citizenship process. Some will be undocumented workers who are taking a substantial risk by boarding the buses. For those immigrants, the highly publicized Freedom Ride could put them in danger of being detected and even deported by immigration officials.

But, for immigrants like a 21-year-old Vietnamese man who came to this country for medical treatment for polio, the cause is greater than the risk. He overstayed his visa, sliding from the ranks of legal visitors into the world of undocumented immigrants.

Now a senior in a Boston area high school and living in a homeless shelter, he says the constant fear of being picked up and deported is a nightmare.

He is willing to gamble his tenuous hold on a future here by boarding a Freedom Ride bus, along with Hernandez and 45 other Boston-area immigrants because "if I don't do it, nothing will change. I can't just wait for something to happen. I have to do this for myself and for other people." The Freedom Ride buses will stop in more than 100 communities before converging for a march and series of demonstrations in Washington and then on to the rally in New York.

Immigrants rights advocates say the call for legalization of undocumented immigrants is especially timely after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when terrorism fears spurred an anti-immigrant sentiment in the country.

New laws, including the Patriot Act, have resulted in stricter controls on immigration and tougher stances on those who enter the country illegally.

But Freedom Ride organizers say new immigrants form a substantial part of the nation's workforce and should be welcomed, not turned away.

About half of the current 270,000 members in the national hotel workers union are immigrants, said David Coff,a spokesman for the Freedom Ride's national coordinating office. In cities like Los Angeles, that number goes up to 75 percent.

"Our immigration laws are outdated. They hurt people who are hard-working, contributing to society, and raising families here," said Brian Lang, staff director with the Hotel, Restaurant Employees and Bartenders Union Local 26, which is coordinating the Boston leg of the Freedom Ride.

The official Freedom Riders have been carefully chosen by organizers in each city to represent that region's immigrant community and the spectrum of issues the national effort is designed to highlight.

In the Boston area, organizers have also been canvassing newcomer enclaves to drum up support for the Oct. 4 rally in New York. In addition to the 18 buses in the cross-country caravan, hundreds of other buses and thousands of other demonstrators are expected to travel for that gathering.

Recently, talk of the Freedom Ride has become a refrain anywhere immigrants work or gather: in a Cambridge apartment filled with members of the Bangladesh community; in a Sharon mosque where worshippers hail from Pakistan, Africa, England, and India; inside union halls, hotels, and factories where workers speak Spanish, Haitian Creole, and Portuguese.

In churches with large Brazilian congregations, Freedom Ride organizers appealed to workers who may be concerned about taking time off from work to attend the New York rally by spreading the catch phrase: "One day off can mean a green card." At the Islamic Society of New England in Sharon, one of the region's largest mosques, Freedom Ride volunteer Nazda Alum greeted congregants at several Friday night services with an "Assalam Aleikum" and fliers advertising the Freedom Ride.

Organizers have warned riders about the risk they are taking, and the possibility that immigration officials could look into the immigration status of the riders and demonstrators.

The riders are receiving instruction in how to deal with officials, and lawyers will be available to handle any problems, said Liz Matos, immigrants rights coordinator with the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition.

"This is a risk they are taking," said Matos. "But I think they're taking the risk because they are leaders and by taking the risk they are doing something to create an environment where they can have a better life, a life with dignity, where they can work and will be respected for the work they are doing."