By Isaac Ceja / Real America News
Dec 28, 2023, 01:29 AM EST
Representatives of the Coalition of Full Rights for Immigrants (CDPI) demonstrated outside the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles and in the city of Chicago to ask President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to propose to US President Joe Biden to extend immigration permits. temporary employment (TPS) to eligible immigrant workers in the United States.
Juan José Gutiérrez, director of CDPI, said that last week Biden asked Obrador to contain the migratory flows that cross into Mexico from Guatemala with the intention of reaching the United States, which led to a meeting held yesterday.
“We are having these demonstrations in front of the respective Consulates General of Mexico in Los Angeles and in the Windy City, to deliver a letter addressed to the President of Mexico to, in the most considerate manner, request that in exchange for blocking the border of Mexico and Guatemala, propose to President Biden that undocumented workers be granted a temporary work permit in the form of TPS, Deferred Action or “Parole In Place,” said Alicia Flores, executive director of the Hank Lacayo Community and Youth Center , a non-profit community organization.
During the conference, Gutiérrez presented a written letter to President Obrador where he explained the need for TPS since for many years the Mexican immigrant community has waited for immigration reform.
“We have been waiting for decades for immigration reform promised by different American leaders, including former President Barack Obama and the current head of government Joe Biden,” explained Gutiérrez. “Undocumented essential workers were on the front lines and many saw their lives in greater proportion than any other ethnic group during the pandemic and have yet to receive the respect they earned with their sacrifice.”
After reading the letter to the public, Gutiérrez delivered it to Luis Ángel Castañeda, who is a representative of the community affairs department of the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles.
Castañeda explained that the consulate has full respect for the community’s right to express itself freely and added that the letter will be sent to President Obrador immediately.
Gutiérrez mentioned that recently immigrants from several countries such as El Salvador, Haiti and Honduras have received TPS without having worked a day, but they are not against them having these protections, but rather they are against immigrants who have already been working for several years and paying taxes do not have the same work permits.
Carlos Lazaritt became a citizen through the 1986 amnesty signed by former President Ronald Reagan, which benefited almost 3 million immigrants and suggested that other citizens who were former immigrants be part of the fight to support new immigrants in the USA.
Lazaritt says that it is important not to leave friends and family stranded, that it is important to fight for fair immigration reform for everyone, because all immigrants are citizens of this world and they all have needs.
“I have friends who are citizens, who have lived here for many years, friends and family who have worked for decades, 40 years, and who live, work, pay taxes and their parents have died and they have not been able to travel to Mexico to see them, and all for not having a legal permit,” Lazaritt explained.
“So, it is totally unfair, because they are people who work and who expect the well-being of this country.”
Gutiérrez explained that the community knows that the caravans coming from Latin America are causing a lot of damage to the image and political possibilities of President Joe Biden to be president of the United States for four more years.
But he added that it would also be difficult for the Latino community to support Biden if the president doesn’t do something about the work permits that Latino immigrants so desperately need.
“For four decades, immigrants who reside, work and pay taxes to the country’s treasury have not even been granted a temporary work permit,” he explained. “How could we ask Latino voters to vote for President Biden’s re-election if until now we have been ignored and received nothing.”