Something beautiful happened in Chicago today. . .

[wndycty]

. . .I just love watching people, all people stand up for their rights.



Tens of thousands of Mexican and other immigrants march during a massive rally to protest proposed changes to U.S. immigration laws in Chicago, Illinois March 10, 2006. REUTERS/Stephen J. Carrera



Tens of thousands of immigrants, many carrying U.S. flags, march into downtown Chicago on Friday in a show of support for immigrant rights and to protest a pending Senate immigration bill, Friday, March 10, 2006, in Chicago. The protest comes as the U.S. Senate struggles with a bill to stiffen border enforcement and a new report estimates the illegal immigrant population has grown from about 8.4 million in 2000 to nearly 12 million.(AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)



Protesters carry a banner during a march supporting immigrant rights in Chicago, Illinois March 10, 2006. Tens of thousands of Mexican and other immigrants held a massive rally in Chicago on Friday to protest proposed changes to U.S. immigration laws. REUTERS/Stephen J. Carrera

http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/search?p=Immigration&...

[mucifer]

1. Yes and no mention in the NY times!

great photos wndycty!

There's some more at www.chicagotribune.com

and an interesting article in Spanish from http://www.laraza.com/news.php?nid=31020&pag=0

Speakers at the march included mayor daley, governor blago, and senator dick durbin. dem dem and dem!



Our state is great!

[SongOfTheRayne]

2. Activism....beautiful.

[DanCa]

3. Awesome pic man

I wish I was allowed to drive. I would have loved to have attended this.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

4. It's amazing what 10, or so, people can do.

[sam sarrha]

5. here are some LINKS> for information

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/2/26/1646...

http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/mexico...

NAFTA has taken 26,000,000 jobs.. there are another 20,000,000 migrants.. the problem is not the migrants but the Mexican government.. that the UN has declared ..'Morally Bankrupt and Democratically Irretrievable'

we are heading for a really serious problem, this is the largest migration of people in the history of the world, we are paying for it now and the problems this is going to cause in the future can be averted by forcing Mexico to do what they should be doing and can be doing if they were not as badly infected with greed as the capitalist elite are here that are taking advantage of the migrants here...

we are facing catastrophic environmental, economic and political problems, we can be facing devistating famine and unprecidented relocation of regional populations in the near future if the south coastal areas become uninhabital with a string of hurricane, and one every 10 days, we had one in DECEMBER in the atlantic.. this problem is not what it seems right now, we and the mexicans are being played for corporate profit, what is going to happen to them when citizens here start starving and cant feed their famalies because our wet brain alcoholic drug addict sociopath pResident crashes the economy.. the mexican gangs in the USA are already the 8 largest armed force in the world

dont flame me if you dont read the links.

[sadiesworld]

24. self-delete

[Rainscents]

6. This is kind of protest we need through out the country for any

protest!!! Then, just maybe, our government might listen.

[leftstreet]

7. Wow. Was there any coverage of this on the teevee news?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

8. I caught a short blurb on Faux

I was amazed. not CNN, or NBC... FOX. Probably wanting to get the freepers outraged for daring to believe they have rights.

[leftstreet]

9. That's the ONLY reason Fox Hate News would show it

[ClayZ]

10. Yay... Bravo! Tens of Thousands!

http://www.internationalanswer.org /

Lets Get Millions out on March 18th.
http://www.internationalanswer.org /

Keep it up!

[madokie]

11. that is what got us out of vietnam

[caligirl]

12. Can we get them to carry anti Bush banners, anti war banners? They

appear to have the muscle the rest of America lacks

[solinvictus]

13. It's a shame INS wasn't there...

to check ID's at checkpoints and deport the illegals. I have no sympathy for the illegals inside our borders.

[katinmn]

20. Then tell American industry to stop hiring them.

But then they'd have to pay Americans a living wage, health care, etc.

[entanglement]

29. Many of them are US citizens and legal permanent residents, FYI

I suppose you expect the INS to say something like "your papers please?" to every brown person at the rally?

[dysfunctional press]

14. ummm...not to be picky, but- what "rights" do ILLEGAL immigrants have?

personally, i'm much more concerned with the rights of actual citizens- but it's probably going to be awhile before we start to see enough of them pried off their couches and out from in front of the tv to start to have the numbers for a march.

[hunter]

15. Not to be picky, but what do I care about YOUR rights?

[solinvictus]

16. The right to be deported..

that's the only one I can determine.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. Read the Geneva Convention of which we are

signatories... it also covers the rights of peoples on the move around the world in peacetime... yet that includes them illegals.

That will be your first clue

Second clue... read the US Constituion... all rights save voting, aka the franchise, are given to immigrants. In fact, until the movements in the late 19th century against Italian and Eastern European Immigration moving to the US was just a matter of packing up and moving the family across the ocean.

Now... at the very least immigrants legal and illegal have the right to humane treatment.

That does not mean I am all for illegals crossing the border, but you know what? There is a very simple solution to this problem, one that our fearless leaders, both Republican and Democrat fail to apply... for many good (business) reasons. It is very simile: ENFORCE THE DAMN LAWS. What do you think would happened if all of a sudden we started giving employers fines for each illegal they hired> Perchance they would STOP the practice the moment they faced loosing their property? Yes, part of the law that was passed but never enforced.

perchance you might want to explore why... but here is a huge free hint, Central Valley of California... they are VERY POWERFUL and politicos from BOTH parties are afraid of rocking that boat... why? Well it is cheaper to hire them illegals, and even call INS a day before pay day... get all that work, and you don't have to pay them anyway... yes do some research, and you might find out it is a common practice... to the point that INS now almost refuses to round up before pay day.


I know hate the mexican today, just as we once hated the Irish and the Italian, old American tradition... by the way, you want to go work on them fields? It USED to be a job school kids took during the summer, but these days... you want to go do that?

[hunter]

22. The right wing likes illegal aliens. They use them to threaten citizens.

Essentially illegal aliens are disposable workers who are less likely to complain about wretched working conditions than citizens are.

It's not these illegal aliens who are turning the United States into a country more like Mexico than "first world" countries like Western Europe or Canada, it's the people with money and their whore politicians who are doing it. They seem to want the United States to revert back into some nineteenth century capitalist hell hole where working people have no voice and no choice. Do as you're told by you bosses or starve.

You should be thankful that these workers are pushing back. So long as the civil rights of undocumented workers and other immigrants are enforced than the civil rights of ordinary U.S. citizens are more likely to be enforced too.

[Terran1212]

23. This bill in insane; these 500,000 people are doing the right thing

Under the "Sensenbrenner" Bill, even physicians who treat illegal immigrants would be committing a crime. It's Draconian.

[Marie26]

17. Bill restricts legal immigration

Not to be picky, but do you know what this rally was protesting? There's a new immigration bill in the House that not only increases border measures, but also restricts legal immigration. It completely eliminates the "visa lottery" that allows a set quota of immigrants from various countries. Most troubling, it makes it a crime for any social worker, doctor or professional to help illegal immigrants. This means that a doctor at a free clinic can't do a check-up for an immigrant w/diabetes, a social worker can't find a home for neglected children, a legal aid attorney can't help a battered wife to file for a divorce. There are basic human rights that we all have, but this bill seeks to keep undocumentated immigrants from receiving even the most basic protections. It's cruel & unecessary.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-03-08-voa3.cfm

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. And violates the Constitution, not that these folks care

and the Geneva Convention... I forgot,. they are quaint...

[katinmn]

21. It also puts torture victims seeking asylum at risk of being deported.

http://www.cvt.org/main.php


The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to consider an immigration reform bill that would negatively affect many torture survivors in the United States. In essence, it would put torture survivors in danger of being deported to the very countries from which they have escaped.

The legislation, called the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, would mean that if a torture survivor could not obtain a passport from the government responsible for his torture and entered the U.S. using someone else’s passport, he could be jailed up to 15 years and barred from asylum. It would also criminalize large numbers of asylum seekers who fall out of status while trying to apply for asylum and expands the scope of the activities considered “alien-smuggling” such that it could be illegal for an organization like the Center for Victims of Torture to assist a torture victim who fled without documentation.

Urge your Senator to ask members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to make appropriate changes to the bill before it is voted out of committee. Tell them comprehensive immigration reform is possible without causing further harm to torture survivors

[wndycty]

25. Kick

[dysfunctional press]

26. in case you haven't noticed-

there are a lot of actual citizens who are losing the government services that they already paid for- and unless we make it less attractive for people to come here illegally, it's never gonna stop.

[Marie26]

27. Do you really think people will stop?

So a poor Mexican man who can't feed his family is told that in Texas, they're paying migrant workers $300 dollars a day (a fortune compared to the $10 dollars a day he's currently making). You know what? He's going. He doesn't stop to think, "Hmm, this is attractive, but what about the sociological ramifications of Bill 2993?" People will come as long as there is a job available for them. If you REALLY wanted to end illegal imm., we would pass bills making it illegal to hire undocumented workers, or require a minimum wage for all undoc. workers. That would end the demand pretty quick. Corporations like illegal imm. because it ensures a pool of workers that they can completely exploit. If they were actually held accountable for this, they wouldn't be so eager to hire illegal workers. Less jobs for illegal aliens = less illegal aliens. That man in Mexico hears that they're not hiring anywhere, and he decides to stay where he is. That's the answer. Anything else is simply petty revenge that seeks to punish immigrants, not something that will actually solve the problem.

[dysfunctional press]

28. it's all part and parcel- a multi-prong approach...

and your thoughts are just another prong in the attempt to make it as un-attractive for illegals as possible...no medical care, no schooling, no JOBS! etc... if they want those things, they should look to their own country and government, NOT ours.

[Cleita]

30. Well, I think the designation of illegal is not a valid one.

People are not illegal and everyone has basic, universal,human rights. Whether a goverment or group of people don't want to recognize those rights, doesn't mean they don't have them.

I think in the future, the designation of an illegal human being will be regarded as odious as regarding a human being as property or a slave is today.

[Marie26]

31. Most immigration experts

use the term "undocumented".