Up to 20,000 protesters marched through the southwestern US city of Phoenix on Friday in an explosion of Hispanic opposition to plans for a draconian crackdown on illegal immigrants.
Police said that 15,000 to 20,000 people took part in the Phoenix demonstration, as more than 2,000 high school students staged a classroom walk-out in Los Angeles and Latinos in the southern city of Atlanta rallied and boycotted businesses to protest plans for a legislative assault on immigration.
Fresh protests are scheduled to take place across the country in the coming days, including one in Los Angeles yesterday that organizers claimed would attract hundreds of thousands of people.
PHOTO: AFP
Friday's march in the Arizona capital of Phoenix paralyzed the city and surprised authorities, who had expected only about 2,500 protesters against a the immigration reform bill to be debated in the US Senate next week.
Opponents have branded the legislation inhumane, unfair and discriminatory.
"It's racist. The origins of this country are based on immigration. They [immigrants] are looking for a better way of life and to work hard and are a very good benefit to this country," said Mexican immigrant Daniel Ravella, a 42-year-old who has lived legally in the US for four years.
"I don't agree with the way the immigration law is being passed through the Senate," he said as he marched with his wife and two children.
People clogged the city streets as far as the eye could see, as police on horses, bicycles and in cars scrambled to control the much larger than expected crowd of angry protesters.
The mainly Latino demonstrators, waving US and Mexican flags, chanted and brandished banners with slogans such as "We are not criminals, we are human."
"We march today because we are immigrants, we work hard and we love the USA," said illegal immigrant Carlos Diaz, 25, who has lived in Phoenix for the past five years.
"We are a part of the US. We want amnesty. We want to be residents," he said.
In a possible sign of things to come, one banner unfurled by protesters read: "We are a lot, we will be more."
Some 35 million Hispanics, many of them from Mexico, live in the US and form the basis of the human machinery that keeps the major cities humming.
Latinos who have gained US citizenship form an increasingly important part of the US electorate and make up 12.5 percent of the total population.
The immigration reform bill to be debated next week, House Resolution 4437, targets illegal immigrants, who number some 11.5 million, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, and account for 24 percent of farm workers, 17 percent of cleaners and 14 percent of construction workers.
The law would make all undocumented immigrants criminals and require all employers to verify the immigration status of employees.
The US House of Representatives has already passed the bill, and Republican Senator Bill Frist has introduced a companion bill in the Senate that also would make it a felony to be in the US without the proper paperwork.
It comes amid growing US security fears and as conservatives complain of illegals stealing jobs.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS