Immigrant rights groups protest in San Francisco and across California

Immigrant rights groups protest across California

Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 16, 2006

(05-16) 13:27 PDT SAN FRANCISCO - Grassroots immigrant rights activists in San Francisco and several other California cities staged a series of press conferences today to slam President Bush's call for National Guard troops to patrol the border.

They also denounced both the immigration bill now under consideration in the U.S. Senate and another the House passed in December as punitive, and they called for legal permanent residency for all the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants now in the United States.

Activists in San Francisco -- who represented community networks of primarily Mexican immigrants from San Jose, Salinas, Sacramento, Stockton and other cities -- rallied outside the Financial District office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, with signs and banners that read "Do Not Militarize the Border" and "No Human Being Is Illegal."

Leaders said they would continue marching in the streets until their message is heard by senators in Washington, D.C., debating whether to provide legal status to many illegal immigrants, create a temporary guest worker program for future immigrants and beef up immigration enforcement at the border and in American workplaces.

The guest worker proposal particularly rankled Luis Magaña, a community organizer from Stockton whose father worked for years under the Bracero program, which brought in temporary workers from Mexico from 1942 to 1964. Magaña called the Bracero program abusive.

"If a program doesn't give us the full rights accorded other workers in the United States, then we're against it," he said. "They haven't spelled out the details and there's no discussion with the people who will be affected."