By Sean O’Driscoll

IRISH campaigners were among the 500,000 people who marched in Los Angeles last Saturday in a pro-immigrant rights demonstration that was one of the largest public protests seen in recent U.S. history.

The protesters, who took up the entire of downtown Los Angeles, were campaigning on behalf of the Kennedy/McCain bill which would legalize undocumented immigrants, and against the Sensenbrenner House bill, which would make illegal immigration a felony crime.

Irish Tricolors flew intermittently among the crowd, which was made up mostly of Latino immigrants from the greater Los Angeles area.

Celine Kennelly, executive director of the Irish Immigration Pastoral Center in San Francisco, described the rally as the “perfect march.”

“It was absolutely huge, it was peaceful, it was everything you could have hoped for,” she told the Irish Voice.

She said the phones have been “hopping” since the Senate Judiciary Committee approved immigration legalization legislation on Monday and rejected the worst effects of the Sensenbrenner bill.

“People have been calling and calling. Everyone wants to know what the legislation means and where things go from here,” she said.

Among those taking part in the Los Angeles rally were Jamie High from Los Angeles and her Irish boy-friend, Joe. The Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform (ILIR) arranged for the pair to wear “Legalize the Irish” t-shirts for the rally, which drew wide media attention.

The local NBC affiliate, KNBC, interviewed the pair, as did a host of radio stations and an Asian-American TV station.

“We got a lot of attention,” said Jamie. “I guess because most people in the rally were Mexican or from Central America, the media wanted to hear some other story.”

Jamie had called around to local TV stations before the rally to raise awareness.

“KNBC got right back to us and said it would be a really interesting hook for a story so a lot of people saw us on TV,” she said.

She said that the Latino marchers were delighted to see some Irish support.

“They said it was so cool that we were there. A lot of people were asking us about our T-shirts and commenting on it and saying that it was great to see us. They were really cool to us,” she said.

The couple did have one bad experience — one Mexican man in the crowd started arguing with them, telling them that the Irish had “been around too long” in the U.S.

Jamie said she shouted back that she was part native American and that her family were here before anyone else.

She also said that her mother was from El Salvador and her grandmother on the other side was from Cork in Ireland.

A crew from the Asian station KTOWN rushed to the argument and asked her to repeat her words on camera while radio station journalists gathered around.

“We really stood out in the crowd,” she said.

Jamie’s boyfriend, Joe, came to the U.S. in 2002 and works in construction. The couple are hoping to get married in Ireland, especially if the Kennedy/McCain bill is successful.

“We’ve seen real exploitation of workers by bosses who hold their immigration status over their heads. It’s time for all that to end,” Jamie said.

The couple arrived at the rally at 8 a.m. and the route was already packed with people.

“The route was just 1.3 miles but there were so many people were had to leave the main route and walk for a while on another street down to City Hall. It was crazy,” she said.

Jamie said that she was delighted to see pro-legalization legislation make it through the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday and said it made the early morning march “absolutely worth it.”