RSSThis is why they march
Carolyn Hileman - The Voice* | May 2, 2008 |
Their demands
We Say:
Black, Latin@, Asian, Indigenous, Arab, White &emdash; In Unity there is strength.
ICE raids are racist, anti-union and violate immigrant and US workers’ civil rights & divide families.
Jobs & homes, not lay-off and foreclosures. Stop demolition of public housing in New Orleans & everywhere.
No war in Iraq. Bring the troops home now.
Political asylum for Victor Toro. No deporation for Flor Crisostomo.
Money for levees in New Orleans, not the US / Mexico border wall.
Repeal NAFTA, no more U.S. trade agreements that force migration & cause lay-offs here.
Victor Toro, Activist For Illegals, Revealed As An (Illegal) Immigrant Himself
By Lincoln Kahn
[Previously by Lincoln Kahn: Diversity Is Strength! It’s Also…The Mexican Mafia]
Victor Toro, who has spent the last two decades promoting the rights of illegal aliens in the Bronx, New York, was arrested on July 6th.
Guess what? It turns out that Toro himself was never legally in the United States. He now faces deportation. His shocked supporters have organized numerous rallies and fundraisers to pay attorneys’ fees and they’ve persuaded The New York Times to run a sympathetic account of his plight. [Longtime Advocate for Immigrants Now Faces Deportation, By Anthony Ramirez, New York Times, July 11, 2007]
Where is Toro from and how did he get here?
In the early 1970’s Toro was one of the three founders of a Chilean political party called the MIR, or the Movement of the Revolutionary Left. Yes, Toro was an avowed Communist and fervent admirer of Fidel Castro who sought the overthrow of his country’s elected democratic government. He stood even further out on the left than Salvador Allende.
Toro was forced into exile when Augusto Pinochet came to power in a coup, restored order and rebuilt the economy. In the years that followed, Toro claims, he drifted about Europe.
At some point, though, he wound up living in Cuba. It was there, in 1980, that his daughter was born.
But, like so many extremists, it seems that Toro was in favor of the revolution in principle but eager to enjoy the fruits of capitalism in practice. So he moved to the U.S. and set up a storefront organization promoting radical agitation in the Bronx. His presence in the Bronx, of course, not only violated U.S. immigration laws, but was also almost certainly a violation of the McCarran-Walter Act, which barred political undesirables from entering the country.(McCarran-Walter was repealed by the Immigration Act Of 1990, after Toro settled in the US.)
In the years that followed Toro concerned himself with promoting far-left causes in the U.S. and leading marches and rallies against Pinochet. He also worked to help illegals and received substantial grant aid to subsidize his work. An internet search shows receipt of at least one disbursement of $50,000 alone.
Throughout this time though, it appears that he did not bother to master English. Consequently, when Toro (who refused my repeated requests for an interview) spoke to the Newspaper of Record and posed for photos, his Cuban-born daughter had to do the translating for him.
The Times then returned the courtesy by not asking why Toro needed a translator after more than two decades in the U.S. Similarly, reporter Anthony Ramirez failed to ask what Toro had been doing in Cuba and neglected to inform the paper’s readers of his involvement in those expressly pro-Castro Communist political activities in Chile, something which could easily have learned by Googling.
Toro was picked up by U.S. authorities during a routine search for illegals as he boarded an Amtrak train near the Canadian border in Rochester, New York. Of course, he could have been caught at any time prior to this if the INS and police simply had bothered to ask for the papers of this non-English speaker before.
Notable, too, is the (all too routine) handling of the case: Toro did not contest the accusation of being an illegal, but he was released by a judge on his own recognizance and could disappear once again at any time—with the aid of the many illegals he’s assisted in the past.
Toro is currently out on bail, but this hasn’t stopped him from taking time out from his preparations for court to appear alongside Cindy Sheehan as a speaker two weeks ago at a New York anti-war rally.
Statement by Flor Crisostomo
January 28th, 2008
Flor CrisotomoTwo years ago I was arrested in a raid that destroyed the lives of hundreds of IFCO workers and their families. The raid was part of the campaign of “attrition” through “enforcement only” that is the current wrong-headed policy of this government.
I have exhausted all my legal appeals and I have been ordered out of the country today. I am expected to be one of the flashing yellow warning lights that tells the 12 million undocumented to leave their families and “self-deport.”
I am not leaving. I have asked and been granted sanctuary in my church. I am not defying the laws of this country and I am not hiding. I am taking a stand of civil disobedience to Make America See what they are doing. I hope that adding my grain of sand to the struggle will help to get the U.S. Congress to act to fix a broken law and an inhuman system of undocumented labor.
I will not be used as symbol of fear. Instead, I will continue to add my light to others to make America See what they are doing to 12 million human beings and their families.
I hate the system of undocumented labor. It has separated me from my children for seven years. I believe with all my heart that Mexico and the United States together must end this system.
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