[Mb-civic] Out Of the Shadows - Harold Meyerson - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Out Of the Shadows
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By Harold Meyerson
The Washington Post
Wednesday, April 12, 2006; A17

Adrian didn't know all of the 20 guys who were propping him up, but he 
had to trust them and had no reason not to. The first 16 had formed a 
circle not far from the speakers' platform at Monday's immense rally for 
immigrant legalization on the Mall, and four other young men clambered 
atop them. Then some of them hoisted Adrian until the four could lift 
him still one level higher, and somebody else handed up a large American 
flag, which Adrian, perched atop this human Mount Suribachi, waved back 
and forth as the crowd chanted " Sí, se puede! " and "USA!"

A slight, bespectacled 18-year-old, Adrian began his journey to the Mall 
five years ago, when he came to the States with his mother and younger 
sister -- devoid of papers that could legalize his presence here. His 
English is excellent, though he had to leave his Baltimore high school 
this year (he now works pickup construction jobs) when his mother was no 
longer able to provide for the family. Back on solid ground, he smiled 
when I asked him how he knew that the band of friends and strangers 
beneath him could spontaneously become a human juggling troupe. "The 
people united," he laughed, taking one of the day's slogans and turning 
it into a literal answer, "will never be defeated."

The people united had themselves quite a day on Monday. In vast numbers, 
from the nation's capital to the little slaughterhouse towns on the 
prairie, the janitors, laborers, cooks, nannies, gardeners and busboys 
-- the background players in the lives of our professional middle class 
-- suddenly took center stage. To be sure, there were also lawyers and 
students and thousands of little ones underfoot on the Mall, but this 
was chiefly a coming-out party for that part of the American working 
class that has lived in shadows. The help became human. The mute found 
their voice.

Old Ted Kennedy told them that this was a day they would teach their 
grandchildren about; he was, for the moment, young King Henry and they 
were all about to do battle at Agincourt. For years, Kennedy had been 
leading the charge for immigrant rights on Capitol Hill; he plainly 
inspired their gratitude and affection. But many among the march's 
organizers also had quiet thanks for Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate 
leader who pulled the plug on the steadily worsening compromise 
legislation that was rushing through the upper house of Congress late 
last week.

"Nothing coming out of the Senate was good enough to survive 
reconciliation with the House bill," said one veteran civil rights 
organizer. "Our hope is to go back into the streets to get something 
better."

Indeed, the deterioration last week of the workable and balanced bill 
that emerged from the Senate Judiciary Committee was so rapid that it 
left the immigrant, business and labor groups that had supported the 
committee's bill confused and divided over how to proceed. Where the 
committee's bill had established a clear path to legalization for 
America's undocumented, the bill that was coming to a vote on the floor 
was unworkable and nearly incomprehensible. Illegal immigrants here for 
more than five years could stay and become citizens; those in the States 
for between two and five years would have to return to a designated 
border checkpoint to be recertified and readmitted by the Citizenship 
and Immigration Services; those here for less than two years would have 
to go.

For this system to work, immigrants would have to produce employment 
records from employers many of whom hired them partly to avoid having to 
keep employment records. They would have to produce utility bills for 
apartments they shared with a dozen co-workers. And the CIS would have 
to perform at a level of efficiency it has never even contemplated. In 
the end, millions of immigrants now underground would remain underground.

The problem is that the Republicans are trying to balance a punitive 
nativism with a genuine solution to the problems of immigration -- much 
as, in Medicare Part D, they sought to solve the problem of rapidly 
rising drug costs with legislation benefiting the pharmaceutical 
industry. If these guys had written the Civil Rights Act of 1964, they 
would have tried to preserve segregation.

But from the evidence of the polling, which shows a clear majority of 
Americans now favor a path to legalization, and from their own growing 
ability to mobilize the immigrant population, the immigrant advocates 
believe that momentum is on their side. They feel what A. Philip 
Randolph, who organized the 1963 March on Washington, sensed when he 
looked out over that historic throng and spoke of "the meaning of our 
numbers."

In Monday's numbers, there was strength: in the 20 who hoisted a young 
man with an American flag, in the 12 million who are making our country 
new again.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/11/AR2006041101098.html
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