Immigrant marches and the backlash “Hoy Marchamos; Mañana Votamos”

Immigrant marches and the backlash

May 4th 2006 
From The Economist print edition

THE images filled the nation's TV screens: a million or more demonstrators, almost all of them Latino, marching peacefully through America's cities on May 1st in the hope that Congress would grant America's 12m or so illegal immigrants a right to reside in "the land of the free". On the same day, hundreds of thousands of poor Latinos forfeited their pay (and risked being fired) to emphasise their economic importance as both workers and consumers. As the banners proclaimed from Los Angeles to New York, "Hoy Marchamos; Mañana Votamos" (Today we march; tomorrow we vote).

The success of the protests was real enough, both in turning out the demonstrators and in boycotting the economy. At the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, only around 10% of the lorry-drivers turned up for work; in both California and Florida farm workers in their tens of thousands left the fields untended; in the Midwest, meat processors such as Tyson Foods closed shop for the day. Indeed, the economic impact would clearly have been still greater if several Latino leaders, including LA's mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, had not been lukewarm about it. …