MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US religious leaders march against immigration reform

Dozens of Christian, Muslim and Jewish clergy marched in Washington to the U.S. Congress Monday to protest the proposed immigration-law reform, a day after huge demonstrations in several US cities.

The clergy, all wearing handcuffs, were accompanied by more than a thousand immigrants carrying the flags of their countries and the occasional banner to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Some wore the orange vests of road and park workers.

Besides the protest in Washington there were marches in Detroit, Michigan, and in Huntington Park, California, coinciding with the beginning of the debate on legislative reform in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The outcry of hundreds of thousands of protesters taking part in demonstrations Sunday in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Dallas, Phoenix, Milwaukee, Columbus and other U.S. cities has apparently shaken the Senate.

An amendment proposed by Democrat Dick Durbin to exempt religious groups, social and medical organizations and charitable foundations from the penalties laid down for those who provide aid and comfort to undocumented immigrants was approved Monday by the Committee.

The prayers of the Christian parsons, Jewish rabbis and Islamic imams were followed by the crowd singing "we are all sons of God".

Provisions of the immigration reform bill approved last December by the House of Representatives include making illegal immigration a felony and denying U.S. citizenship to children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants. An estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants live in United States.

The possibility that millions of people who live and work peacefully be declared felons and those who help them will also be accused of breaking the law, has set off a wave of protests, led by religious organizations, unseen in the US for the last two decades.

"This law has awakened a sleeping giant - the immigrant population - that is rising up to say: 'We're not leaving, and if you throw us out, we'll be back,'" said Jose Rodriguez Marin, bishop of the Hispanic Church of God in Nashville, Tennessee.

Meanwhile, White House press secretary Scott McClellan refused to comment on whether President George W. Bush would veto a bill that does not include his proposed guest-worker program, after saying that the legislative process for immigration reform had just begun.

The Judiciary Committee has until midnight to continue polishing the bill's final text, after which the full Senate will begin debating on Tuesday, said the panel's ranking Democrat, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy.