On Sunday, several hundred farm workers, students and union members concluded a four-day rally that took their protests from the eastern edge of LA county to downtown Los Angeles. The 50-mile march passed through 27 cities and was joined by supporters on the way.

"This is a very important march, for us and for our communities, because it's an act where we can show the world what we feel about our cause," said Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers Union. "What we are asking for here is justice, respect and dignity for immigrant workers and their families."

The march was organized in response to a bill signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last Wednesday halting a law that would have allowed illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses as of 2004. The law was passed by former Gov. Gray Davis in September at the height of a campaign to recall him. Immigrant and Latino organizations had been fighting for years to get the law approved.

Protestors said the repeal was a bad sign of things to come for illegal immigrants under the Schwarzenegger administration.

"The driver's license is one issue that we are confronting but I feel in general that all our rights are at stake now with the new administration of Arnold Schwartznegger," said Ricardo Moreno, regional organizer of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles Legislators supporting the repeal said the law was a security threat because it lacked adequate checks to ensure terrorists could not get hold of a license to enter federal buildings and airplanes.

"A driver's license would open doors for illegal aliens from any country in the world that are now closed to them including the doors of airplanes like those hijacked on 9/11," Republican Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy wrote last week in an opinion-editorial. "This law would be bad at any time, but in an age of terrorism, it is incredibly dangerous."

Mountjoy and other lawmakers claimed the driver's license law would also encourage illegal migration by rewarding those who crossed into the United States without papers.

However, José Calderón, one of the organizers of the march and a professor at Pitzer College in Claremont, rejected the idea that the law was a terrorist threat and said the argument merely stigmatized the immigrant community.

"To say you are going to exclude a whole group because of what happened on 9/11 is discriminatory, it's focusing on one part of the community and saying that they basically have the values of terrorists and criminals," he said. "What is happening is that there is an economic crisis, and every time there is an economic crisis, the blame is given to those at the bottom."

Moreno said terrorists have no need for a driver's license because anyone can board a plane in the United States with just a passport. Instead, allowing illegal immigrants to obtain licenses would make the roads safer for everyone because all drivers would be legal and able to purchase car insurance.

According to official statistics, there are some two million unlicensed drivers on the roads of California without training or insurance. Many of these drivers are illegal immigrants.

One of the protestors, Mexican farm worker Rodolfo Lopez, said he would continue to drive even though he couldn't get a license.

"I need to get around," he shrugged.