Immigrant workers rally in NYC and demand changes

NEW YORK -- They clean homes in Boston and Chicago and sew in factories in San Francisco. They pay taxes, but many undocumented workers are not allowed to drive or vote. For years, their tenuous status kept them from speaking out against policies they felt were unjust, but increasingly immigrant workers are making their voices heard as their numbers reach record highs in the United States.

Inspired by the Freedom Riders of the Civil Rights movement, 900 immigrant workers who traveled across the country on 18 buses to demand better treatment for immigrants and more visas for family reunification rallied yesterday in the Flushing Meadows neighborhood of Queens. They were joined by 75,000 immigrants, some of them undocumented, who came to New York to push for the legalization of immigrant workers in the United States.

"We take what immigrants contribute to our country but we give nothing in return," said Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, former chairman of the immigration committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"I came here today because I feel in the workplace we need to have a voice," said Helen Wong of San Francisco.

Wong, 54, arrived in the United States in 1986 and worked for $1 an hour in a San Francisco garment factory. She now works in a hotel and belongs to a union. She said unions have brought about improved working conditions for some immigrant workers, but there is still a long way to go.

Immigrants accounted for more than half the growth in the labor force between 1990 and 2001, according to a Northeastern University study released last year. In March, a census survey said despite a dismal economy and security concerns along US borders, the number of foreign-born people in the United States reached 32.5 million last year, the highest level in the nation's history. Still, advocates protest that the federal government has forgotten about the problems facing immigrants since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

"There are policies, but there are failed policies. There is a system that doesn't work. That is what we are talking about, fixing a broken system," said David Koff, spokesman for the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride.

Koff said the purpose of the bus ride and rally was to push the government to put immigration issues back on the national agenda.

Massachusetts organizers recruited enough workers to fill 40 buses with Bangladeshis, Brazilians, Salvadorans, and Colombians, and travel to New York yesterday. Many of the freedom riders, such as 44 Brazilian-born workers who traveled from Allston to New York City, said they were willing to risk bringing attention to themselves, and in some cases, to their illegal status.

The Boston-based workers were given notes explaining they didn't have to speak if authorities questioned them. They were told to sing or hum if an officer asked even for their names.

Earlier yesterday morning, Neide Teixeira, 28, led her two sleepy-eyed boys out of their home in Cambridge and into a bus headed to Queens. Without legal immigration documents to stay in the country, Teixeira has managed to make a living cleaning other people's homes. By marching in the rally and riding on the bus, she hoped to tell the government that by granting her a green card and a driver license, the government would be providing her children with a better life.

"I want amnesty," she said in Portuguese of her decision to ride the bus. "I want my children to study here someday."

Ravenia Moreira, a junior from Brighton High School, dreams of becoming a dentist. But her parents are ready to move back to Brazil if her immigration status prevents her from getting a college diploma.

"Even if I pay out-of-state tuition, I don't know if I will be able to get my diploma," she said. "My school said they are going to help me, but my parents have said that if I cannot get a college diploma, then we all go back to Brazil."

Juventino Camarena of Las Vegas said stringent immigration laws that force families to separate must be reformed. Camarena, 41, remembers his own mother leaving him in Mexico when he was a child so she could work in the United States.

"My mother left for the US; I didn't know why. All of a sudden, she just disappeared," he said. "I was too young to understand."

After five years of picking strawberries and pears in a ranch in Santa Rosa, Calif., his mother returned with enough money to buy a home in Mexico. But those years without her had been a loss.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. 2001, "thousands of immigrants have been deported," Camarena said. "In some cases they are married to a US citizen. Still, they have not been reunited with their family. . . . This is an issue dear to my heart because I lived life without my own mother."

Rafael, a 26-year-old undocumented worker from Chicago who didn't want his last name printed, said that he has lived in Illinois since he was 8 years old but that immigration backlogs and old laws have prevented him from getting a green card.

"So I have to work the jobs that nobody else wants," he said. "I do yard work, work in factories, clean houses. Because I can't get an ID, I can't go to clubs or buy a video at Blockbuster. I am virtually a prisoner, but I still want the American dream."