Hispanics take case to D.C.

Benjamin Grove

Thursday, Sept. 16, 1999 | 10:59 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Hilareo Diaz left Michoacan, Mexico, 15 years ago for Las Vegas, the laborer said. Now Diaz likely will lose his job and could be forced to take his family, including four children, back to a country he no longer calls home.

Diaz is part of a small contingent of Nevada's Hispanic leaders who plan to join a rally on Friday at the U.S. Capitol to protest the deportation of thousands of immigrants.

"I have a good job, good insurance, benefits, a home," Diaz said Wednesday. "I don't need welfare or food stamps."

Diaz has been caught up in a complex web of immigration law changes that date back to 1986.

The most recent blow: the Immigration and Naturalization Service has revoked work authorizations belonging to thousands of immigrants -- an estimated 22,000 in Nevada -- as a result of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which stripped the federal courts of their jurisdiction over appeals cases made by immigrants.

Because of the act, thousands of immigrants have been deported since September 1998.

"These people are losing everything. Many of them have been here for 10 years," said Mario Rocha, union representative for Culinary Union 226 in Las Vegas, which has lost 1,800 workers like Diaz since September. Rocha is in Washington for the rally. "We're losing a lot of valuable employees."

Diaz, whose youngest two children were born in Las Vegas, has been steadily employed since he arrived in 1984 and began seeking citizenship, he said. He has worked for the last three years as a cook helper in a casino that he declined to name.

"It's a nightmare," said Las Vegas activist Malena Burnett, who founded Fair Treatment for Immigrants. Burnett is in Washington this week to attend the rally and is working on behalf of many like Diaz. "It's frustrating to no end."

Activists are hoping that Congress might accept legislation introduced in August by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., that would allow federal courts to intervene in cases like that of Diaz. The legislation sits in a Senate committee, awaiting a hearing.

"Sen. Reid has taken the lead," Burnett said. "But for people like Hilareo, there is no legislation yet."