Activists in Los Angeles, where massive rallies have galvanised the pro-immigrant rights movement, said last night they were mobilising for a new political blitz on Washington.
The campaign seeks to lobby members of US Congress and flood their offices with telephone calls and postcards demanding legalization for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. It also plans summer-long citizenship and voter registration drives and possibly more protests.
"We have leverage (from) the millions of people who have been out there demonstrating in the streets," said Antonio Rodriguez, a leader of the pro-immigrant March 25 Coalition. "They want a seat at the dinner table and they want to partake of the benefits."
The postcards, organised by the We Are America Coalition backed by the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese, will target Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican who has pledged to bring an immigration reform bill back to the floor by the end of May.
The coalition said it would also call on Latinos to bombard California's senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both Democrats, with phone calls.
Hundreds of thousands of mostly Latino immigrants spilled into the streets across the United States on May 1st as part of a national day of boycotts and protests to demand rights for illegal immigrants.
The issue has split Congress, where some conservatives have called for a crackdown on employers who hire illegal immigrants and a fence along the US border with Mexico.
But others, including President George W Bush, want a guest-worker program that would provide a "path to citizenship" for most of those here already, acknowledging the huge US demand for workers met by the undocumented work force.