The small turnout of immigration marchers on the National Mall Thursday was evidence that most Americans have rejected the demonstrators’ calls to legalize the 12 million illegal immigrants, say critics of the movement.
“The message has been received — the American public have seen the foreign flags waving, heard the rhetoric from the ’60s and said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’” said John Keeley, spokesman for the conservative think tank Center for Immigration Studies.
Immigration advocates held the rally Thursday to remind Congress that they hadn’t forgotten about the immigration issue and promised a crowd larger than the 150,000 who marched in April. But only about 5,000 showed.
“Five thousand people on the National Mall is not going to change the political dynamics of the country,” Keeley said.
Rally organizer Jamie Contreras, chairman of the National Capital Immigration Coalition, said critics who believe the movement has died down will be proven wrong in the November mid-term election and in the 2008 elections.
The spring rallies were triggered after the U.S. House passed a bill that would build 700 miles of fences on the border and make felons of illegal immigrants and those who help them.
After the spring demonstrations, the Senate in July passed a bill supported by President Bush that would allow the illegal immigrants already in the United States to remain in the country and eventually earn U.S. citizenship.
The bill would also create a guest-worker program.
House Republicans rejected a compromise with the Senate and held dozens of hearings over the summer to criticize the Senate bill. Keeley said the hearings also turned the public onto what was inside the Senate bill and against the immigration movement.
“We haven’t won anything,” he said. “Anything can happen with this conservative Congress.”
Both sides agreed that the marches have been repetitive and questioned the purpose of Thursday’s rally.
Maryland House Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez, D-Montgomery County, said many supporters stayed home because they may have been scared off by hateful attacks and high-profile raids.
Some who marched in the spring didn’t show Thursday because they may have frustrated by a Congress that has been stuck between the House and Senate bills.
“Some people say, ‘Yes, Congress is in session, but so what?’”
But many are probably tired of marching and are ready to vote in November, Gutierrez said.
“I know I am,” she said.
