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NEW YORK — Chanting, flag-waving demonstrators filled the streets around City Hall in lower Manhattan yesterday, vowing to keep pressing Congress to give undocumented immigrants a path to legal residency in the United States. The crowd, estimated by the organizers at 125,000, stretched from City Hall into the side streets and up Broadway as far as Grand Street. Speakers rallied the crowd from a stage and three giant video screens, but marchers blocks away could hear only the thundering chants around them. "It's brilliant," said Brian McKenna, a plumber who lives in Yonkers and who marched with the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform. "I hope everybody remembers that everybody in America is an immigrant, from one stage or another." McKenna promised that America would see more of the same until Congress acts to change immigration laws. "If it doesn't affect them this week, next week we'll be out again, and the following week. They're going to have to face up to reality sooner or later," he said. U.S. Senate leaders dropped a tentative compromise last week that would have offered a legalization process to undocumented immigrants who had been in the United States for more than five years. The Senate Judiciary Committee said it would take up the issue again after Congress' two-week recess. The House, meanwhile, has passed a bill that would make it a felony to be in the country illegally. Demonstrators organized at least five routes that converged on City Hall, said Ari Rosmarin, who coordinated a team of 25 monitors from the New York Civil Liberties Union. The monitors were watching for police interference with the march, he said. Aside from some confusion over the barricades, which were set up like gates to control the flow of the crowd, the march was entirely peaceful and free of arrests, he said. The flags of Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil, Haiti, Colombia, Uruguay and countless other nations were waving above the crowd along with the U.S. flag. The local contingent included marchers from the Rockland Immigration Coalition, Sarah Lawrence College and the Westchester Hispanic Coalition. Marchers came in all ages. Nine-year-old Marcela Falcon of Manhattan, dressed all in pink, said she was marching "because I don't want my mother or father to leave." Her Mexican father, a restaurant worker, walked behind her as Marcela wore signs that said, "We support our parents" and "My voice counts too." She held another sign over her head: "You leave our countries, we'll leave the one you stole." It was a multiethnic crowd, though no more so than the people watching from the sidewalks along Broadway. People paused with their shopping bags to watch. Among the more colorful characters was one group that re-enacted the Passion of Christ with a twist: A Roman soldier lashed the Christ character, shouting, "You gotta go back, man!" Supporters of the march expressed a variety of reasons they supported legalizing undocumented aliens. David Blair, who sells jewelry from a table on the sidewalk, contended that the legalization of immigrants was the practical thing for the government to do — just like the legalization of marijuana should be, too. "Everybody smokes it, but they don't tax it," he said. "Government might as well profit by it." For Roman Shusterman, a political science student at Marymount in Manhattan, it's a matter of fairness. "We should really have free trade, not just for business but for everyone," he said. Unity was a constant theme. "I have papers, but I support everyone," said Alejandro Carro, an 18-year-old student at New Rochelle High School. "In reality, we're all Latinos."
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