Believe In America.com

butterbean · Joined: 21 Jun 2006 Posts: 2271

POMONA - About 200 people marched through downtown Pomona on Friday calling for an end to recent immigration sweeps.

Day laborers, college students, clergy and others walked from the 1600 block of West Mission Boulevard to Gordon Street chanting slogans and holding signs in English and Spanish.

Among the marchers was Roberto Aguila of Pomona, who is here illegally and works as a day laborer.

The general-construction worker said he joined the march because the sweeps are unfair and he would like the nation's leaders, including President Bush, to address the immigration issue.

"President Bush must realize there should be legalization soon so people can get driver's licenses and identification cards and go out on the street without fear," he said.

Aguila said he came here from the Mexican state of Jalisco in 1992. He has returned to his native country twice but found he needed to come back.

"There is work but the wages are low and the cost of everything high," he said.

The starting and ending points of the march were symbolic, said Jose Calderon, president of the Latino-Latina Roundtable of the San Gabriel and Pomona Valley, one of the event's organizing groups.

The parking lot between a fast-food restaurant and the Pomona Economic Opportunity Center, also known as the Pomona Day Labor Center, is where four laborers were reportedly arrested Jan. 20 by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, Calderon said.

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http://www.sgvtribune.com/news/ci_5099622
SAVE US BOTH SOME TIME, AND JUST LEAVE!