Miami, United States
The September 15 Foundation this Friday asked Democratic Congressman Albio Sires to put pressure on the government of Honduras to send the new national identity documents to the Honduran community in the US, without which they cannot legalize or settle their situation here. his native country can vote. country.
Juan Flores, chairman of the Foundation in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, told Efe that in May, the old Honduran ID cards will expire and migrants in the United States have not yet received the new ones, without which they cannot vote. the November elections in Honduras.
They will also not be able to take advantage of immigration measures, such as a possible new extension of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, which will include approximately 44,000 Hondurans, which will expire at the end of this year and allow their beneficiaries to live and work legally in the United States.
The directors of the Establishment September 15 They virtually met this Friday with Sires, of Cuban descent, who has been elected president of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee in the House of Representatives, where he represents New Jersey.
Sires and Norma Torres, Democratic Congressman from California, wrote a letter to President Joe Biden last week expressing their commitment to work with his administration to address the root causes of migration from Central America’s Northern Triangle and importance of a TPS. For Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
According to him, there are “extraordinary and temporary circumstances” in these countries that prevent them from returning safely to their place of origin.
The Northern Triangle has been devastated by the pandemic, two hurricanes and four years of presidency Donald Trump, weakening human rights protections and strengthening the most corrupt actors in the region, ” Sires wrote on his Twitter account last week.
The need to promote respect for human rights and fight corruption in those countries, and to help people affected by hurricanes Eta and Iota and society in general to protect themselves from COVID-19 is the central idea of Sires and Torres’s letter to Biden, who they describe as the most experienced US president in Central America history for his accomplishments as vice president at Barack Obama.
Flores said they had spoken with Sires for an hour and that they explained to him that the TPS could be a relief from the crisis that Honduras is experiencing, because if migrants who fall outside that protection had to return, the situation would worsen.
They also highlighted the “ democratic point, ” said Flores, who believes that if migrants participate en masse in the November elections, they can contribute to the election of candidates willing to genuinely fight corruption and defend the validity of the rule of law. and freedoms.
Flores said there is no “good faith” in the response from the authorities Honduran to their demands so that the new ID cards reach the Honduran migrants as soon as possible and they asked Sires to help them get what they asked for.
The administration of now-former President Trump announced its extension last December TPS for residents of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti, Nepal and Sudan until October 2021.
The program grants temporary work and legal residency permits to citizens who, at the discretion of the U.S. government, have left their country as a result of natural disasters or armed conflict, and a large number of foreigners with these protections have lived in the United States for decades. .
Currently, about 400,000 people in the United States are covered by TPS, most of them Salvadorans (250,000), Hondurans (75,000) and Haitians (50,000).