Illinois leaders cheer Biden protections to Venezuelan migrants

While Illinois and Chicago leaders on Thursday rejoiced at the news that President Joe Biden will grant temporary legal status to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants who have crossed into the U.S. — following months of anxiety over the rising pile of pending work authorizations from Washington — advocates cautioned the process will take months to trickle down to the migrants it will benefit.

Late Wednesday, the Homeland Security Department announced that about 472,000 Venezuelans who have entered the country by July 31 will receive temporary protected status, which fast-tracks their approval to legally work. The development was heralded as a long-sought victory by Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who both spent this summer walking a delicate line between pressuring the White House to take more action on the now-14,000 migrants who have come to Chicago while maintaining good relations with the leader of the Democratic Party ahead of the 2024 national convention.

The announcement came a month after Johnson and Pritzker joined other Illinois elected officials in a massive news conference sounding the alarm for the federal government to expedite asylum-seekers’ work permits, with the mayor saying the city would be unable to support additional migrants without reprieve from the Biden administration.

“As we reach a critical point in our mission to receive new arrivals and put them on a path to resettlement, the action taken today by President Biden and Secretary of Homeland Security Investigations Alejandro Mayorkas to expand the temporary protected status to Venezuelan immigrants comes at a welcome time for our city and our country,” Johnson wrote in a statement Wednesday. “Where there are labor shortages in our city … it is clear that authorizing new arrivals for work in these sectors would have a significant public benefit — both to our local and regional economies, and to the families and individuals who are new arrivals to our great city.”

Since assuming office, the humanitarian crisis surrounding the asylum-seekers in Chicago has become one of Johnson’s top issues as migration from south of the U.S.-Mexico border has ramped up with no end in sight. There are 1,600 migrants currently sleeping in Chicago police station lobbies, often under squalid conditions, but a plan by the mayor’s team to move them into tent base camps before the winter has garnered its own controversy.

The decision from Biden is expected to affect thousands of new arrivals in Chicago, though it was not immediately clear exactly how many. City, state and federal officials didn’t immediately respond when asked for an estimate of how many migrants in Chicago and Illinois would be affected.

The process for applying for work authorization will not apply to everyone and it will take months to make its way into city-run shelters, said Diego Samayoa, associate executive director at Centro Romero, a community-based, front line organization that helps eligible migrants apply for work permits.

“Most migrants don’t know how to navigate the system,” Samayoa said.

Indeed, as government leaders celebrated Wednesday’s announcement, migrants staying at the 5th District police station in Pullman were unaware of the news. Betzabeth Bracho has been staying at the station with her husband for over five months and they are working to save money to rent an apartment, she said. She hadn’t heard about a policy shift.

She said her husband, who fled Venezuela to escape political persecution, hasn’t been able to find work for days. She said they left behind two young sons, who she calls every day.

“I’m willing to do anything,” she said. “Cleaning, washing dishes, it doesn’t matter.”

Samayoa said the nonprofit has seen over 4,000 new arrivals from the southern border and has submitted applications for work authorization for about 1,200. But fewer than 5% have gotten a work permit due to lack of documentation, insufficient income, or their constant movement from one shelter to another, he said.

Applications are long and expensive. Just one application asks for pages of documentation, and without the help of a nonprofit such as Centro Romero, it can be over $400, he said.

The majority of migrants who have come to the city from southern border states such as Texas have been Venezuelans fleeing extreme poverty and political violence. Around July 31, there were at least 4,000 Venezuelans counted in the city’s census of migrant shelter population and those still awaiting placement, according to city data, but that does not account for those who exited the shelter system.

Pritzker issued a statement Wednesday evening saying he was “very pleased that President Biden has listened to my concerns and those of other governors and political leaders.” He also took another shot at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican governors in the south who have played a hand in busing or flying migrants north to liberal cities like Chicago and New York.

“Since day one of this humanitarian crisis, I have heard one thing from migrant families and their advocates — they want to build better lives and work,” Pritzker wrote. “Despite traveling thousands of treacherous miles and then being used as political chess pieces by those who should have welcomed and helped them, they are eager to contribute to their new communities and get to work. Reducing wait times for employment approvals and expanding protection status for those coming from Venezuela will get people working and on a path to building a better future for themselves and their families.”

[ What to know about Chicago’s migrant crisis ]

The extension and re-designation of Venezuela for temporary status protections will last 18 months and aim to grant work permits within 30 days, but only to the asylum-seekers who crossed with the mobile app, called CBP One, or through parole granted to Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. About 242,700 Venezuelans in America already qualified for the temporary status before Biden’s decision Wednesday. Those who arrived after July 31 will not be eligible; in Chicago, city records show at least 2,500 new arrivals have come since that date, though not all of them are Venezuelans.

Secretary of Homeland Security Investigations Alejandro Mayorkas, whom Johnson had spoken with multiple times throughout this summer, underscored the danger Venezuelans face in their home country in Wednesday’s announcement.

“Temporary Protected Status provides individuals already present in the United States with protection from removal when the conditions in their home country prevent their safe return,” Mayorkas wrote. “That is the situation that Venezuelans who arrived here on or before July 31 of this year find themselves in. We are accordingly granting them the protection that the law provides. However, it is critical that Venezuelans understand that those who have arrived here after July 31, 2023, are not eligible for such protection, and instead will be removed when they are found to not have a legal basis to stay.”

While immigration organizations hailed the announcement as long overdue, the exclusion of other Latin American countries from the re-designation did not go unnoticed by advocates.

“It is time to do the same for other countries. Central American countries. We’ve been asking for the past three years,” said Yanira Arias, national campaigns manager for Alianza Americas, a Chicago-based transnational organization rooted in Latino immigrant communities in the United States.

On Thursday morning, pro-immigrant organizations and city leaders joined residents in the country without legal permission at the zócalo in Pilsen, a community that has been shaped by Mexican immigrants, to not only celebrate the news, but to also ask about their path. With chants of “Work permits, now!,” they demanded that the Biden administration grant work permits and lead immigration reform for the more than 11 million immigrants already living in the country without legal permission.

“We are being forgotten,” said Consuelo Martinez, a mother of two who has been living in the country without authorization for 27 years.

But their plight has been overshadowed by the humanitarian crisis surrounding the asylum-seekers, which has become one of Johnson’s top issues.

This week, news of a recent contract the city signed with a private security firm, GardaWorld, regarding the base camps alarmed immigration advocates and aldermen who said the company choice and its plan for the encampments worried them. GardaWorld also signed a contract with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ executive office to run his relocation program that flies migrants to blue cities.

Then there is the fiscal strain. Chicago is projected to reach a $538 million shortfall in Johnson’s first budget, with the total cost of supporting Chicago’s migrants is expected to reach $200 million next year. The city has already obligated an estimated $144 million on migrant care this year.

Though he has ruled out raising property taxes, Johnson himself warned this month: “So the sacrifices that will be required in this moment will be necessary from all of us, every single level of government,” when asked about whether additional revenue will be needed to support the migrants.

As the rain came down Thursday in a Home Depot parking lot in the Chatham neighborhood, four men who had arrived from Venezuela said they had no idea how to apply for a work permit, and didn’t know what temporary protected status meant.

“We will do whatever it takes to work,” said 34-year-old Christian Sarmiento from Venezuela, looking into the street in an attempt to wave down a car.

Chicago Tribune’s Dan Petrella and Associated Press contributed.

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Originally Published: Sep 21, 2023 at 11:11 am