Illegals will not give up Riverside, Ca.

'Riverside is going to be ours'


By RICHARD PEARSALL
Courier-Post Staff
RIVERSIDE

The organizer of a prayer rally expected to bring hundreds, if not thousands, of people to town hall today and says that if the township persists with its Illegal Immigration Relief Act, his group will fight back with more than rallies or lawsuits.

"For every immigrant who feels afraid and leaves Riverside, we are going to find an immigrant to volunteer to come live in Riverside," the Rev. Miguel Rivera, president of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy & Christian Leaders, said Friday.

"They will be staying at the homes of Brazilians."

And they and other Latinos will be working to obtain mortgages and purchase homes, Rivera said, with the help of at least three banks that his organization is speaking with.

"Instead of tenants, there will be owners," he said, noting that citizenship is not required to purchase property in the U.S.

"Riverside is going to be ours," he said.

Rivera's remarks, today's rally and a lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court in Newark challenging the constitutionality of the ordinance were the result of the township committee enacting last month a measure that seeks to punish landlords who rent to or employers who hire illegal immigrants.

Township officials and residents who support the ordinance insist that it is aimed at illegality, not immigrants per se.

"Yes, we are all immigrants, says Rose Rendfrey, 79, a resident since 1948. "But our grandparents came here the right way."

Mayor Charles Hilton estimates the number of illegal immigrants in his town, many if not most of them from Brazil, at anywhere from 1,500 to 3,500.

How people who aren't supposed to be here can protest is beyond her, Rendfrey said.

"They're here illegally," she said. "They don't have the right to say what they want or don't want."

But opponents of the ordinance, such as Rivera, contend that its supporters are disingenuous in saying their goal is dedication to the law.

"They disguise it as a solution to the immigration problem," the Methodist minister said, "but what they are really expressing is a racist and discriminatory attitude against Latinos."

Gary Christopher, the chairman of the local planning board, disagrees.

Respect for the law is a key part of what makes this country great, he said in an interview shortly after the ordinance was passed. He said he believes it's time that message was reinforced.

Opinions in the township vary as to what effect the ordinance has had already. Most people, particularly businessmen, believe it has driven a good number of people away, out of fear of either prosecution, or persecution.

Christopher sees nothing wrong with "making it uncomfortable to be illegal."

Others do.

Jim Doxey grew up in Riverside and attended St. Casimir Elementary School and Riverside High, graduating in 1961. He has gone on to college, the Peace Corps, and eventually a career teaching and studying sociology in Brazil, where he has lived for the past three decades.

Of English and French descent himself, he remembers growing up in Riverside with fondness, remembering it as "a true melting pot, a place where people certainly had their differences but generally got along."

After reading of the township's reaction to its latest wave of immigrants, however, Doxey said, "I'm almost embarrassed to say I'm from Riverside."

He sees the Riverside approach as "not a very sensible kind of reaction," Doxey said in a phone interview from Vitoria, Brazil.

He said he was contemplating a trip to Riverside, where he still has relatives, to try to help bridge gaps between two cultures.

Father Angelo Amaral, a native of Brazil who conducts a weekly Mass in Portuguese at St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church in Riverside, says that will take time, "working together, little by little."

"You cannot force them to live your culture," he said of the Brazilians he ministers to. "They are happy with their culture here."

On the issue of legality, however, he demurs, saying "it's very contradictory to discriminate against anyone in the church."

"I see them as Jesus sees them," he said. "My goal is to welcome them into the church."

He would no more turn away a congregant in need, he said, than a doctor would a patient who was sick.

"What can I do, put them in a box and send them back to Brazil?" he asked.

In his sermons, he said, he tries to teach his parishioners "to have a better life here in the United States."

"I tell them they need to organize themselves, they need discernment, they need to be peaceful, they need to obey the law."

Father Angelo said Mass is as well attended now as it was before the ordinance, but he acknowledged "some people are moving." He said his congregants include people from surrounding towns.

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