Editorial: March will make migrants’ value known

A million people in one area might seem like nothing more than a
fire hazard to some.

But today in downtown Los Angeles, if a million people actually
show up to participate in two pro-immigrant marches (as city
officials have predicted they will) then they will also be in the
vanguard of one of the most important issues facing this country
right now.

There are those who argue that today’s protests and
general boycott, which are expected to block wide swaths of traffic
downtown on Wilshire Boulevard and Broadway, will generate a
backlash against the movement because people will just get upset
about being stuck in traffic.

Others would argue that the objective of the marches ““ to
bring immigration to the forefront of people’s minds ““
has already been accomplished, and that today’s actions are
therefore irrelevant. A Los Angeles Times poll published on Sunday,
for example, found that 42 percent of Californians and 31 percent
nationwide believe immigration is one of the biggest problems
facing the country.

But that argument misses the larger point of these protests.
Multitudes won’t march in downtown Los Angeles today just to
keep immigration in the headlines of the newspapers ““ though
that will be one of the likely outcomes. (After all, they did get
us to write about it.) The larger point is to show to people who
don’t think they are impacted by vague talk of green cards,
border fences and the estimated 2.5 to 2.75 million illegal
immigrants in California just how badly that belief is untrue.

If immigrants ““ legal and illegal ““ did not show for
work one day, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. But the
absence of one day’s workforce will hopefully galvanize
people into thinking what would happen if immigrants never showed
up for work, if immigrants, in fact, could not even enter the
country to find work.

Indeed, march organizers have taken to calling this “A Day
Without a Latino” or “A Day Without an Immigrant”
in homage to the mockumentary film “A Day Without a
Mexican,” which theorized what California would look like if
all the Mexican immigrants vanished for 24 hours. And surely this
cause ““ to poignantly remind us what happens when people we
rely on simply disappear ““ is a worthy one to march for.

To march today would also be to take a stand against the
immigration bill passed in the House, which takes a punitive
approach to illegal immigration and ignores the fact that many such
people work as hard and contribute as much to society as American
citizens. An article in The New York Times last year, for example,
found that immigrants contribute as much as $7 billion a year to
Social Security.

The House bill is dismissive of illegal immigrants because
it’s easy to be dismissive of a people who you cannot see and
who do not have a voice. It’s a little more difficult to be
dismissive of hundreds of thousands of marchers who would
essentially be voting with their feet when they take to the
streets.

As to whether today’s marches will create a backlash
against the immigrant movement, that’s doubtful. Our country
can have a short-term memory about some issues, especially an issue
which involves people who are, for all intents and purposes,
invisible to the larger part of society. Invisible, that is, until
they all decide not to show up to work.

It’s probably time people were reminded of just how
visible the immigrant population can be.