Bloomberg Warns Against Strike by Illegal Immigrants

Building on street protests that have drawn public attention to the policy debate over immigration, some New York illegal immigrants are planning a one day strike on May 1 that Mayor Bloomberg is warning against.The strike was a topic of debate recently in the overcrowded Sunset Park, Brooklyn, apartment of four dry-clean pressers. The young men, illegal immigrants from the same rural village in Mexico, say they want to show America what it would be like if there were no immigrant labor or dollars.“It’s going to be a hard hit for the economy,” one of the men, Candelario Santos, said in Spanish, “but you will realize all that work is powered by immigrants.”Calls for a strike began with a massive rally in Los Angeles on March 25 that drew record crowds calling for a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws. Since then the word has reached New York, where an estimated 125,000 immigrants turned out to rally for the same cause near City Hall a week ago. Some marchers last week were predicting May 1 would be a greater show of force.Most local immigrant leaders and politicians have come out strongly against such a strike, warning it is premature and could backfire, harming workers rather than helping them.Immigrants appear to be organizing anyway, however. Among the city’s poorest illegal workers, particularly the flood of recent Mexican immigrants, the idea of showing the city what it would be like to live without their labor appears to be popular and spreading quickly.The plan is for the illegal immigrants to stop work and also not to spend money on the day.“When I go out on the street they say, ‘Do you know about May 1?'” one of the few immigrant organizers who has been outspoken in support of a strike, Omar Henriquez, said. “Sometimes the organizations ask the people to come out, sometimes the people just say we are going to do it.”He likened the effort to the civil rights campaigns of American blacks in the 1960s.”I don’t know why people are afraid to come out and support it,” he said. “We know what was done to the African Americans and know that the boycott works, especially when we have so much influence in terms of purchasing power.”Mr. Santos, an orphan who left school at 13 because his adoptive parents could not afford it, stole across the border seven years ago at 18 seeking work. He has not returned to Mexico since then. Instead, he married his childhood sweetheart from Mexico, who also crossed illegally, and together they are raising their two American-citizen children in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.For Mr. Santos, who usually irons at a Flatbush dry cleaner, where the temperature often reaches more than 90 degrees, the attraction of the May 1 walkout is a chance for Americans to see the effect of the labor of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. “The people who drop off their clothes in a hurry, asking for a one-day turnaround, they don’t realize that while they’re sitting in the air-conditioned office, we’re doing the work,” said Mr. Santos, who said that while he works six days a week, he earns $400 a month with no insurance.Earlier this month, the Senate briefly declared a breakthrough on revisions to the immigration laws, introducing a compromise plan that would grant legal status to illegal immigrants who have been here for more than five years. Mr. Santos would have qualified. That plan, however, appears to have collapsed, and the Senate is on a break this week. Mr. Santos dismissed a guest worker plan first promoted by President Bush to grant three-year visas as slave labor. “They will work them to death and after three years send them back to Mexico,” he said.Near Mr. Santos’s home in one of New York’s growing Mexican enclaves, Andres Hipolito Morales chatted yesterday with customers about the strike as he sold Easter bouquets.“They say we are a burden for them,” Mr. Morales, who has lived in America illegally for the past 15 years, said in Spanish. “We are the ones working.”To prove that point, on May 1 he will abstain from working or spending money, he said. He plans to keep home from school his four children – ages 11 to 20 and all illegal immigrants. Mr. Morales said he believed the majority of New York’s Mexicans, the city’s fastest-growing major immigrant group, would do the same.Other customers who stopped by were not as optimistic. A young woman said she had heard on Spanish-language radio that if immigrants did not show up for their jobs, others would be there immediately to replace them. Mr. Romano also acknowledged that restaurant workers or employees of large construction companies could not stay home because they would risk being fired.Though there were no reports of firings in New York after the April 10 march, in various other cities around the country immigrants lost their jobs. For that, among other reasons, the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, Chung-Wha Hong, said the vast majority of the city’s immigrant groups have joined the coalition in opposing a strike and instead are planning an alternative action for May 1. Some organizers are asking workers to wear white, while others are endorsing the boycott but not the strike.“We don’t want to put immigrant workers in jeopardy,” the director of the New York Civic Participation Project, Gouri Sadhwani, said. “The reality is that the rallies that have been held across the country have had a positive impact, and many people think that it is premature to call for a boycott.”Mayor Bloomberg also has warned against the strike, saying in a radio address last Friday, that he thought the idea of trying to shut down America’s economy was a “little strange.”“No matter what you think about the issue, I don’t know that you accomplish anything not going to work that day,” he said. Labor leaders, who played a significant role in generating the last turnout, said they cannot support a strike because of contract laws.Mr. Santos said he had heard on Spanish-language television about such efforts to dissuade immigrants from marching. Still, he said, from his perspective it is a rare chance for people to see what it would be like for their laundry not to be done right away.“We already know that the next day there will be clothes waiting for us,” Mr. Romano said, but “it feels good to see the ‘sleeping giant’ wake.”

Bloomberg Warns Against Strike by Illegal Immigrants

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