NEW YORK (AP) - Immigrants and advocates in New York City watching President Barack Obama’s speech Thursday night announcing an immigration reform plan said the action that could impact up to 5 million people is a meaningful first step.
Applause broke out among roughly 200 supporters at a New York union headquarters when Obama said “we were strangers once, too,” and they waved American flags and cheered as he concluded.
“This is how we get ready to fight for the many excluded ones, to fight for every immigrant worker in this country,” said Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ President Hector Figueroa in English and Spanish.
“Our country is ripe (for) what is right,” he said. “Let’s do what is right: Let’s get immigration reform.”
Gisele Lima was thrilled to think she might now have a path to remain legally in the country where she’s been for 20 years and has an American-born 15-year-old daughter. “I’m so excited,” said Lima, 51, a domestic worker originally from Belo Horizonte, Brazil. “We have hope, me and so many other people.”
Bismarck Contreras also planned to apply for the new deportation relief. A 35-year-old, married construction worker and father of two, the Ecuadoran said he crossed the border 13 years ago in search of opportunity.
“I pay my taxes. I have two gorgeous boys, a beautiful wife,” he said in Spanish, via an interpreter. “I’m very happy (the president’s plan) is something that pertains to me.”
Contreras, who’s involved with a labor and immigrant advocacy group called La Fuente, said he saw Obama’s plan as “something, compared to nothing.
“But what we really need is real immigration, for all immigrants,” he said. “Because there are people who’ve been here longer who don’t have the same requisites as others.”
Outside the union office, a couple of protesters held “no amnesty” signs.
“We have a lot of unemployed Americans right now, and I don’t understand why unemployed Americans can’t be hired to do the jobs these illegals are doing,” said one of the protesters, John Wilson, who works in contract management.
He was troubled by post-9/11 revelations that some of the terrorist hijackers had overstayed their visas, and he feels authorities should have made a thorough move then to remove everyone in the country illegally - and the government shouldn’t be sending a message now that it’s OK to have come or stayed here illegally.
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