Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Protested

More than 200 people, many with candles in hand, marched through the streets of downtown San Diego on Sunday in a symbolic rebuff of what many view as a rising anti-immigrant sentiment throughout Southern California.

The candlelight walk, or posada-- styled after traditional Christmas-season processions in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America--was also designed as a counterpoint to the ongoing Light Up the Border campaign, in which U.S. protesters here shine their headlights toward Mexico in protest of illegal immigration.

“We’ve seen so much anti-immigrant feeling lately that we wanted to give people an opportunity to come out and say something positive about immigrants and refugees,” said Richard Garcia, executive director of the Center for Migratory Affairs, the San Diego-based immigration assistance project that sponsored the march.

Marchers wound through city streets, stopping outside the Metropolitan Correctional Center--the federal prison where many immigrants are incarcerated--and deliberately passing by the federal complex housing the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Meanwhile, 100 miles to the east, in the Calexico-Mexicali border area, demonstrators planned a separate candlelight march late Sunday in honor of victims of violence along the U.S.-Mexico frontier.

“We want to show our support to those who have been killed and injured, and to ask that the violence against immigrants stop,” said Blanca Villasenor, a Mexicali social worker who is one of the leaders of that effort.

The march on the Calexico-Mexicali border was to take place three weeks to the day after a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot a 15-year-old Mexican youth who was positioned atop the border fence. That event has touched off numerous protests in the area, including a huge demonstration Nov. 28 that resulted in a nine-hour shutdown of the international border.

The two pro-immigrant events held Sunday come at a time when the issue of violence against immigrants is increasingly a significant irritant in U.S.-Mexico relations. In a meeting in Mexico last month, President Bush and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari jointly condemned violence on both sides of the border and vowed that their governments would seek alternative means to reduce what many say is an escalating number of violent incidents.

Salinas is expected to address the issue during a visit this week to Baja California, just south of California.

Participants in Sunday’s march in San Diego called for a reduced tension and greater harmony among U.S. citizens and the many new immigrants arriving daily from Mexico and elsewhere.

“Immigrants are needed in our community, and we should welcome them,” said Ozvaldo Venzor, a marcher from Carlsbad in North County, where tensions have been high between immigrants and U.S. citizens.

Also among those holding candles in San Diego was Julio Ramirez, a 25-year-old El Salvadoran who now lives in Los Angeles. “Many people don’t want us here, but it is important that we have a voice and explain that we cannot go back home because many of us would face death,” said Ramirez, who said he and six relatives recently won political asylum in the United States.

Speakers and marchers stressed the growing multicultural nature of Southern California and the need for all races to work together.

“What’s proven here is the possibility that the Hispanic and Anglo communities can live together in harmony and peace with each other,” said Enrique Loaeza, Mexican consul general in San Diego.