For many years, the Tennessee Immigration and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) has organized for a pathway to citizenship for thousands and thousands of undocumented People. Now, the Biden-Harris administration has the chance to take daring motion and uphold their promise to convey a lot wanted reduction for 11 million undocumented households who name the USA house. Proper now, Democrats can take an enormous step in the direction of that aim by way of the funds reconciliation course of and supply everlasting protections to DACA recipients, important employees, farm employees, and TPS holders – 6.9 million People, together with 91,000 Tennesseans.
My title is Sandra Pita. I’m a spouse, mom, small enterprise proprietor, Memphis resident, and DACA recipient. My enterprise works with households to assist clear and care for his or her properties. Although I work full time to help others, make use of a number of members of my neighborhood, and pay taxes, I’m not eligible for a inexperienced card. My non permanent immigration standing means my household is in limbo – unable to plan for the long run and all the time with the worry that in the future we may very well be torn aside if I have been deported and separated from my youngsters.
Providing citizenship to our immigrant neighborhood would add $1.5 trillion to the U.S. gross home product, create 400,000 new jobs, and lift the annual wages of all People by a mean $600 over the subsequent decade.
Early within the pandemic, I labored to maintain different peoples’ properties clear and protected, which ultimately led me to contract COVID-19. After recovering and going again to work, I nonetheless needed to cut back my workforce considerably and drastically lower the variety of homes we clear. The discount in enterprise places immense stress on my household and the households we make use of. Not like many different small enterprise homeowners, I used to be utterly ineligible to obtain CARES reduction funds to help my enterprise just because my household has blended immigration standing. This was a brutal reminder that whereas many households like mine proceed to exit on daily basis and work on the entrance traces to maintain this nation going, we proceed to be excluded from reduction applications and shut out as a consequence of Congress’s failure to create a pathway to authorized standing. That is unacceptable.
As a member of the immigrant home employees community that features greater than 700 ladies throughout Tennessee, I speak to households on daily basis affected by the hurt carried out by a scarcity of everlasting protections or pathway to citizenship. As a TIRRC board member, I see how this not solely harms our immigrant neighborhood, however our state as a complete.
Immigrants work and pay taxes and plenty of immigrant households have lived on this nation for many years. Many people have raised U.S.-born youngsters–but, it has been almost 40 years since Congress has made vital modifications to the U.S. immigration system; the result’s that it has left behind a whole technology of immigrants.
An amazing majority of Tennesseans and People help a pathway to citizenship as a result of they know that not solely is it the fitting factor to do, however upholding a decades-long promise to cross immigration reduction would profit all People. Just lately, the Heart for American Progress and the College of California, Davis’ World Migration Heart estimated that offering citizenship to our immigrant neighborhood would add $1.5 trillion to the U.S. gross home product, create 400,000 new jobs, and lift the annual wages of all People by a mean $600 over the subsequent decade. The common advantages of offering a pathway to citizenship is such frequent sense, that greater than 60% of People help it.
This previous week, I joined 7,000 of my fellow members of the immigrant neighborhood and our allies from throughout the nation to march in Washington DC on the identical day Congress returned to session. Our message was clear:
That is our 12 months – a multiracial, multiethnic and multigenerational coalition elected Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Senators, and Representatives to place Democrats within the majority. With a majority within the Home and Senate and management within the White Home, Democrats should ship on their guarantees. We’ve waited lengthy sufficient for this reduction. We deserve supply on what’s been promised.
