Illegal immigrants in Chicago are reportedly “begging” the Biden administration to extend them work permits as migrants continue to enter the city at an unprecedented rate.
According to a report from The Chicago Tribune, many illegal immigrants who are new to the Windy City can now apply for job permits, especially if the migrants came from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba or Haiti.
However, illegal immigrants from countries like Mexico do not have work permits. One named Juana Arreguin, who opened an ice cream shop, has helped some of the illegal immigrants who are new to the city.
“I wish I could help them, I know how it is to start from zero,” Arreguin said.
Arreguin and her husband reportedly came to the states nearly 30 years ago. They used all their savings from working without job permits in the Chicago area to open the ice cream shop. Now, she said she feels “abandoned” as the Biden administration offered work permits to some “immigrant groups” and not hers.
“Please don’t forget about us. We need job permits too,” she told the outlet (via the Chicago Tribune):
She’s joining the voices of thousands of other immigrants who live in Chicago without legal authorization and are demanding the Biden administration give them the opportunity to work legally as well. Bipartisan advocates leading the “Work Permits for All” campaign say Biden could change the lives of workers like Arreguin through the existing federal parole program that he used to provide work authorization for the newly arrived migrants.
Thousands of workers without permanent legal status — mostly from Mexico — traveled to Washington, D.C., last month along with community organizers, political leaders and even employers to push for the executive order. Though Arreguin couldn’t go, she said she shared her story with the Tribune to empower other immigrants to speak up and bolster the movement that could materialize work permits for the estimated 7.8 million workers in the U.S. without legal permission.
The work authorization, advocates say, would allow those immigrants to step out from the shadows and improve their lives exponentially. They would receive workplace protections and legally set wages that they may be too afraid to demand under the current circumstances.
And they could visit their home countries without sacrificing the lives they have built in the United States. Many living in the country illegally go the rest of their lives without seeing family because they would be barred from reentering the U.S. if they left.
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Reportedly, in Illinois there are more than 300,000 workers without permanent legal status. Most of them are Mexican and in “mixed-status” families.
Another illegal immigrant, Consuelo Martinez, told the Tribune that she is “being forgotten.”
“Biden, listen to us, we want to work without fear, like our Venezuelan brothers and sisters,” she said.
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