Promotes the allocation of citizenship for thousands of foreigners who are vital to the American economy

▲ At the microphone, Jesus Chuy Garcia, a politician and activist, a Democratic federal legislator, during an event with representatives of the Latino community in the United States in which he spoke about granting citizenship to migrants.Photo The Day

David Brooks and Jim Cason

Correspondents

The newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, August 18, 2024, p. 19

Chicago. The Convention The Democratic National Convention, which begins tomorrow here in Chicago, could be a first step to promote a renewed immigration policy proposal that encompasses the enormous contribution of undocumented immigrants to American society, and establish a focus on the urgency of a path to legalization for 12 million migrants, says the always optimistic federal congressman Jesus Chuy Garcia, in an exclusive interview with The Day in your city.

This election is so critical, especially when you factor in the lies and distortions of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.Garcia says, offering a framework for his party’s convention that begins tomorrow

Ensuring that his party wins the election in November is particularly important, given the stance rabid anti-immigrantnot just Trump, but his party, which advocates going beyond intolerance, engendering hatred and, in many instances, violence against foreign people on the move.”

At the same time, for the legislator, the convention is not only about defeating Trump. Garcia, one of the most important progressive Latino leaders in the country, adds that the agenda he is promoting with allies has to include a path to legalization and citizenship status for the 12 million undocumented people. There are signs that this may be possible: Last week, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris declared that the United States must develop a path to legalization and citizenship status. citizenship for the undocumented.

For Garcia, a first step in fulfilling that commitment would be to finally offer a path to permanent legalization for those who arrived as minors through the program known as DACA.

“Americans from both parties agree that this population is as American ‘like us,’” he says. Beyond that, he hopes Harris will will expand further on what it means to address the root causes migration, over the next four years, if he wins the White House.

The causes of diaspora

In an interview after a forum at the Guanajuato House in his Chicago legislative district, Garcia acknowledged that even this limited approach will not be easy.

He notes that the irregular arrival of an unprecedented number of migrants at the US border with Mexico in this election year caused a crisis for the White House and the Democrats, which led them to believe that they had to impose new restrictions on asylum seekers, as well as seek help from Mexico and other countries to reduce the flow of undocumented immigrants seeking to reach the United States. For Garcia, that decision was unfortunate: We have turned our backs on what had been a bastion of our country and our immigration system, and that was having an asylum protocol that really offered applicants the opportunity to present their cases.Getting this back will not be easy, and it will take time, but Garcia is optimistic that it can be done.

I think the vice president has a perspective on this, and my hope is that she will reflect on what has been done, mainly around Central America, and recognize that it has not been enough and that action is required more broadly in the hemisphere.he says, recalling that Harris was in charge of an initiative that allocated billions of dollars to generate economic opportunities in Central American countries with the aim of reducing the flow to the north.

But it will take more than money. The situation forces us to really think about the US government’s use of sanctions (applied to other countries) and what it really causes and who it really affects.explains Garcia.

The boomerang of sanctions

The effects of our sanctions on Cuba, the situation in Venezuela and Haiti, combined with climate change, really raise the question: What are the underlying causes of irregular migration?.

He adds that If people do not feel that they can survive in their country, they will do anything to survive, and that is to move, to migrate, either to Colombia, as so many Venezuelans have done, or to other countries..

However, the November elections must first be won. I think a Trump defeat will also be a fall of Trumpism, and with that we can have a new beginning. My hope is that after this election, if Democrats win the White House, the mere fact that we did it for a second time will lend itself to a realignment of options and create a new space to have real conversations about the facts..

The U.S. economy, Garcia says, needs migrants to grow, to have workers to care for the elderly, to do farm work, to work in meat processing plants and to do many other essential jobs.

Harris’s election will also open a new opportunity for the United States to work with Latin American countries such as Royal Partners.

In this context, he believes that there is a particular opportunity with the election of Claudia Sheinbaum, with whom he met along with other legislative colleagues who visited Mexico shortly after her election. Mexico is particularly important to the United States, and it seems that Mexico jumped ahead of us, politically, by electing a woman as president..