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L.A. business leaders joining May Day call for immigration raid moratorium

Thousands of immigrant workers prepare to march through the city. 
  Their call for a halt to work site raids and legal reform will be echoed 
  by business, labor and political leaders this morning.
By Teresa Watanabe and Anna Gorman
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

9:16 AM PDT, May 1, 2008

As thousands of immigrant workers and their supporters prepared to
march through downtown Los Angeles today, some powerful new allies
will be joining their call for a moratorium on government work site
raids: business leaders.

The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, joined by labor and
political leaders, plans at a news conference this morning to support
calls for a moratorium and also renew its call for immigration reform
that includes more worker visas and a path to legalization for
undocumented immigrants.

Chamber officials will be armed with a new study by the Los Angeles
County Economic Development Corp., scheduled for release today,
showing that tens of thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in
revenue could be lost if continued raids forced businesses to flee
the state.

"This is a landmark moment," said Samuel Garrison, the chamber's vice
president of public policy. "Here you have labor, business, local
elected officials, immigrant rights activists and leading educators
all coming together to say this has to stop.

"The raids are frightening workers. They are worrying employers," he
added. "I think it's going to cause of lot of businesses to think
twice about coming to Los Angeles."

But Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, said officials would not stop enforcing the law. "It's
ICE's sworn duty to enforce our nation's immigration and customs law
and the agency is going to aggressively pursue that mandate," she
said.

In fiscal 2007, the agency made more than 4,900 work-site arrests, a
45-fold increase over 2001, authorities said. Garrison said at least
a dozen Los Angeles area businesses have been raided since January,
including a Van Nuys manufacturing company in February, where more
than 130 undocumented workers were arrested.

The high-profile business backing for march organizers' major goals
comes amid a fierce national debate on immigration reform proposals,
which have stalled in Congress. The battle over what to do about the
nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants has prompted
hundreds of state and local legislative proposals, colored the
presidential campaign and bought tens of thousands of marchers into
the streets across the nation every May 1.

This year, the May Day marches are expected to be smaller -- about
20,000 in Los Angeles -- and quieter. Nationwide marches are still
expected to commemorate what has come to be known as International
Workers' Day. But widespread fear of government raids, along with the
immigrant movement's shift in focus from marches to civic
participation and a decision not to push a boycott this year, are
expected to dampen turnout, immigrant advocates say.

In Los Angeles, where May Day organizers specifically celebrate the
contributions of the immigrant workers who make up nearly half of 
Los Angeles County's workforce, two major marches are planned. 
One is scheduled to start in MacArthur Park and the other on Olympic
Boulevard and Broadway; the two will converge in downtown Los Angeles
this afternoon for a rally at 1st Street and Broadway.

Although march organizers have split in the last two years over
whether to urge a boycott of work, school and consumer spending on
May Day, they agreed this year to put aside boycott calls in favor of
a united front on stopping the raids and working for comprehensive
immigration reform, according to Angelica Salas of the Coalition for
Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

Police are also preparing new tactics to prevent a reoccurrence of
the disastrous melee last year, when they injured marchers and
journalists in a botched effort to clear out MacArthur Park.

Marchers include some of those injured in last year's MacArthur Park
melee, who plan to wear red shirts and walk at the front of the
crowd. Doris Ochoa, a 40-year-old janitor and undocumented immigrant
from Mexico, is one of them. She said she and her two sons, now 5 and
14, were hurt last year while running from police on motorcycles.
Ochoa, who has filed a lawsuit against the city, said she still can't
understand why police hurt innocent protesters.

"Why did they treat us like that?" she said. "They acted in a way
officials shouldn't.

"It's important to show . . . that we are still standing," Ochoa said
Wednesday afternoon.

Acela Aguilar, 37, who has also sued the city, said she plans to
attend the rally at MacArthur Park. Aguilar said she is still angry
at the police for their actions last year and wants to speak out on
behalf of herself and others who said they were injured in the melee.

"The police are to take care of us, to support us, to protect us,"
she said. "Who are we going to call in an emergency if the police
mistreat us?"

Aguilar said she doesn't anticipate any altercations between the LAPD
and protesters today.

"They are in the eye of the hurricane," said Aguilar, who lives in
Echo Park. "Everyone is watching."

Aguilar said she is also intent on returning this year because she
wants to push for legalization for undocumented immigrants. One of
her three children is illegal, while the other two were born in the
U.S.

She worries about her family being split if she is arrested and
deported. Whenever there is a knock at the door, Aguilar said she
checks to make sure immigration agents aren't there. Aguilar said she
believes she deserves to become legal because she has contributed to
the economy for 17 years as a renter, a consumer and a worker.

"If they kick me out, nobody is going to hire me in Mexico," she
said. "I am old. I have put in my youth working here."

Victor Narro, co-president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National
Lawyers Guild, has been meeting with the plaintiffs all year and said
last year's melee left many people injured psychologically as well as
physically. He anticipated that dozens of them will return to the
park for the rally.

"They want to send a message that in spite of what happened, they are
still willing to engage in the fight for immigrant rights," he said.

Maria Elena Durazo, head of the Los Angeles County Federation of
Labor, AFL-CIO, said the more visible role by business would add
powerful momentum to the cause of immigrant workers' rights.

Last month, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce president Gary Toebben
wrote and visited Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael
Chertoff asking for a moratorium on the raids, according to Garrison.

The county employment development corporation study, conducted by its
chief economist Jack Kyser, analyzed three industries thought to
employ high numbers of immigrant workers -- fashion, food and
furniture manufacturing -- and found that about 10,000 businesses
created nearly 500,000 direct and indirect jobs and produced $7.4
billion in annual wages. If 15% of those firms left -- and several
are being aggressively wooed by out-of-state business recruiters,
Kyser said -- the region would lose nearly 75,000 jobs, the report
found.

"The immigrant worker built Southern California and the L.A.
economy," Garrison said. "At the end of the day, they benefit
everyone, whether legal or not."

Meanwhile, school officials in Los Angeles have prepared for possible
May Day student walkouts with a broad-ranging plan emphasizing safety
over disciplinary actions.

Walking out of school to participate in a march or rally will not
result in an automatic suspension. Instead, school staff members
intend to accompany student marchers to keep them as safe and
monitored as possible. To return students to school, the district has
stationed buses at seven locations, including in downtown, Sun
Valley, the Harbor area and Van Nuys.

"We're hoping in most cases students will comply with our rules,"
said Earl Perkins, assistant superintendent of school operations. 
"If they walk, we'll have administrators walk with them. We try to 
work with students on exercising their right of freedom of speech."

The district also has distributed curricular material on immigration
and other current events. Some schools will host open forums in their
quad areas or auditoriums "if students want to express themselves,"
Perkins said. "The thing is to keep them engaged in school as opposed
to walking out on the streets."

By district estimates, 26,000 students walked out on May Day in 2006;
1,575 in 2007.

teresa.watanabe at latimes.com  

anna.gorman at latimes.com  

Times staff writer Howard Blume contributed to this story.