4-Day Illinois March for Immigrant Rights Begins

About 400 supporters of broader immigrant rights streamed out of Chinatown Square at noon Friday to kick off a four-day journey that will end at the district office of House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert in Batavia.

The activists carried a message on T-shirts and placards: Immigrants’ interests matter.

“This is going to be a symbolic pilgrimage calling attention to hard-working, taxpaying people who deserve the opportunity to achieve the American dream,” said David Martino, political director of the local Service Employees International Union.

Organizers said they hoped to persuade Hastert, a Republican, to offer a path to citizenship for the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants and to put a moratorium on raids and deportations by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The Illinois march is part of a series of demonstrations nationwide to pressure Congress to move on stalled immigration overhaul. The demonstrations culminate with a Sept. 7 march in Washington that organizers hope will attract 1 million.

The Senate has passed an immigration package that combines tighter border security with a guest worker program and a plan offering many illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, whereas the House has approved an enforcement-only measure.

Catherine Salgado of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights said she expected a few hundred supporters to walk the distance to Hastert’s office. She predicted that thousands more would show up at rallies along the route.

Hastert hasn’t agreed to meet with the marchers when they arrive at his office Monday. However, members of the Chicago Minuteman Project, a group that opposes illegal immigration, plan to stage a counter-protest there.

Salvador Pedroza, president of the Little Village Chamber of Commerce -- which represents businesses in an area on Chicago’s West Side that the chamber says is home to the largest Mexican community in the Midwest -- said critics such as the Minutemen were misinformed.

“Immigrants give more to this country than they receive,” he said Friday.

Dung Van Nguyen, senior program manager for the Vietnamese Assn. of Illinois, said he came to the march kickoff to support the country’s newest immigrants. “Now, we have jobs and a stable living,” he said. “Now, we must worry about them.”

Times wire services contributed to this report.