As thousands of immigrants boycott work today as part of a nationwide call for reform of America’s immigration policies, local organizations and labor unions are carrying out the May Day protest in alternative ways.

Although members of some groups will be skipping work and school as part of a national strike to demand immigration reform, most are taking part in alternative actions such as attending afternoon rallies, wearing white T-shirts in solidarity, and forming human chains in commercial corridors throughout the city at about noon.

“In other cities, you see major unions or other people really doing the whole organizing around the strike. In New York, given our diversity, people are doing different things to express themselves,” the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, Chung-Wha Hong, said. Indeed, most community groups haven’t officially endorsed the strike, which Mayor Bloomberg has come out against, and have prepared alternatives to boycotting for those who fear reprisals, including the loss of their jobs. “No one should be silenced for their participation,” a community organizer for the New York Civic Participation Project, Zahida Pirani, said.

In New York City – where the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that of the roughly 3 million foreign-born residents, nearly 550,000 are illegal immigrants – community organizers planned a slew of activities for today.

Although the plans do not provide for a central call to action, the message will be unified. “We don’t deserve to live in the shadows, we don’t want to be exploited, we want to be part of the solution, part of our joint future,” Ms. Hong said. “Immigration reform is the solution to lead to strong communities, strong neighborhoods, strong economy.”

Groups behind one of the day’s major thrusts, the so-called human chains that will be formed in Jackson Heights, Sunset Park, Chinatown, and other neighborhoods in New York, said the effort would highlight the city’s dependency on immigrant labor. “We have made major economic and social contributions to this country, and the chain is symbolic of that because it’s showing our link to this country and amongst each other,” Ms. Pirani said. Indeed, a Department of City Planning analysis of 2000 census figures showed that 43% of city residents in the labor force are immigrants.

Many of those laborers face union rules that will stop them from boycotting work today, the vice president of Unite Here, May Chen, said. Instead, Ms. Chen said, many garment industry and Chinese immigrant workers will wear white T-shirts or attend afternoon immigration reform rallies, such as one in Union Square. “It’s significant that the Chinese population understands that while this issue has been led and promoted as a Latino issue, the Chinese community also has a major stake in immigration laws,” she said.

On the eve of the strike, a Chinese immigrant who moved to New York four years ago, Hang Yao Zhuo, 21, said he wouldn’t skip school to strike because he feared his teachers would fail him. Mr. Zhuo, a part-time worker at Universal Optical in Chinatown, said his co-workers aren’t planning to strike, either, because they are worried they will lose their jobs. “But I support it from my heart,” Mr. Zhuo said. “Immigrants deserve to live here and work here. … They have made contributions to the American economy.”