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A Day Without an Immigrant 23Sensenbrenner would have criminalized 11 million unauthorized immigrantsby making lack of documentation a felony rather than a civil infraction.It would also have criminalized the act of providing shelter or aid toan undocumented person, thus making felons of millions of undocumentedfolks, their families and friends, and service workers, includingclergy, social service workers, health care providers, and educators. 11 TheRepublican Party used the bill and the debates it provoked to play on whiteracial fears in an attempt to gain political support from the nativist elementof their base. The Sensenbrenner bill abandoned market logic: a CatoInstitute analysis found that reducing the number of low-wage immigrantworkers by even a third would cost the U.S. economy about $80 billion.By contrast, the same study found that legalizing undocumented workerswould grow the U.S. economy by more than 1 percent of GDP, or $180billion. 12The response to the Sensenbrenner bill was the largest wave of massmobilizations in U.S. history. A rally led by the National Capital ImmigrationCoalition on March 7 brought 30,000 protesters to Washington, D.C.;soon after, on March 10, 100,000 attended a protest in downtown Chicago. 13Yet these events were only the tip of the iceberg. March, April, and May2006 saw mass marches in every U.S. metropolis, as well as in countlesssmaller cities and towns. In the run-up to May Day (May 1), a date stillcelebrated in most of the world as International Workers ’ Day, immigrantrights organizers called for a widespread boycott of shopping and work.The economic boycott, also a de facto general strike, was promoted as “ ADay Without an Immigrant, ” a direct reference to the 2004 film A DayWithout a Mexican . The film (a mockumentary by director Sergio Arau)portrays the fallout when immigrant Latin@s disappear from California enmasse, leaving nonimmigrants to do the difficult agricultural, manufacturing,service-sector, and household work that is largely invisible, but providesthe foundations for the rest of the economy. Participation in the DayWithout an Immigrant mobilizations was immense: half a million peopletook to the streets in Chicago, a million in Los Angeles, and hundreds ofthousands more in New York, Houston, San Diego, Miami, Atlanta, andother cities across the country. In many places, these marches were thelargest on record. 14What produced such a powerful wave of mobilization? The surgingstrength of the immigrant rights movement was built through the hard