By Oriana Piña

Nation’s Oldest & Largest Latino Civil Rights Organization Demands that Federal Legislators Include Protections for All Workers, Including Immigrant Communities. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is urging Members of Congress to include protections and relief for immigrant communities in the next COVID-19 stimulus package. Congressional Republicans failed to include full access to testing and treatment for Dreamers, TPS-holders, and mixed-status families. LULAC will continue to push for an end to deportations, the release of all detainees from immigration detention centers, expedited visa processing for vital immigrant workers, and for all workers to receive financial and health protections, regardless of immigration status.

LULAC continues to demand that the next COVID-19 rescue bills being negotiated in Congress include the following:

Financial assistance for ITIN filers

Unemployment insurance relief for all workers

Automatic extension of work authorizations for DACA/TPS holders

Provisions to release detainees from immigration detention facilities

Continued visa processing for immigrant workers

Provisions for the temporary halt of all deportations

Inclusion of the estimated 2-3 million farmworkers who feed the country

Testing and treatment of COVID-19 for undocumented workers

“While the recent bipartisan bill signed into law was a step in the right direction in providing critical economic relief for families and businesses, it blatantly revealed our nation’s structural inequalities and disregard for communities of color,” said LULAC National President Domingo Garcia. “Legislators failed to prioritize the most vulnerable populations the first time around, specifically the immigrant community. We are asking Congress to show some humanity and compassion by halting the separation of families, stopping deportations, and ending longer detentions than needed. History will judge us by the leadership and actions taken during this time of crisis.”

“As Congress begins the latest round of negotiations, the human and moral focus should be to help those in most need,” stated LULAC National CEO Sindy Benavides. “In the last few weeks we’ve seen an outbreak of the virus in an immigration detention center, the highest rates of layoffs and unemployment disproportionately affecting Latinos, delays in the USCIS asylum process, and millions of undocumented workers left without protections. Yet, it is precisely workers in the Latino and immigrant community, in every sector currently deemed ‘essential’ to our economy, who are risking their health every day for the well-being of our country. The least we can do to repay all workers for their sacrifices is to provide peace of mind that they won’t be separated from their families due to their immigration status and assurance that they will receive equal protection under the law.”

If you want to join LULAC in urging your Members of Congress to include vulnerable immigrant communities in the next stimulus bill, please contact your representative immediately. To find the contact information for your Member of Congress please visit: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members

For more updated and information on COVID-19, go to LULAC@Home or follow @LULAC on Twitter #LULAC.