A Huge Challenge for Immigration Reform

Although problems with United States’ internal security can appear unexpectedly, as happened with the attack during the Boston Marathon, hopes for the planned immigration reform in the coming weeks hold strong and are increasing.

This very week, the president of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Democrat Robert Menéndez, said that he hopes the planned immigration reform is voted on before the recess on July 4, following June’s debates.

Expectations are not as high in many sectors that are linked to this issue, including domestic sectors, but nonetheless the chances of the regularization law being implemented are quite strong.

Therefore we must look again at how the Guatemalan authorities, as well as organizations or communities interested in our compatriots based in the United States, prepare themselves to support, in every sense of the word, and assist those tens of thousands of people who will need help.

In our paper today, the editorial staff speaks to the Executive Secretary of the Guatemalan National Council for Migrants (Conamigua), Alejandra Gordillo, who, if she is truly open-minded about how to deal with our compatriots, will admit that we are not necessarily prepared.

In recent weeks we witnessed the way in which the authorities found themselves under serious pressure to provide passports from the director general of migration in Guatemala, not to mention in the consulates of the United States. If the issue is truly being regularized through extraordinary measures, the message that remains is that we could prove to be inefficient and slow if faced with an early approval of the regularization plan.

It is natural to assume that thousands of Guatemalans who live and work in the U.S. without legal documentation will try to obtain personal identification documents over a short period of time, completely apart from the urgent advice needed to complete records and complicated forms.

Are the consulates prepared — in financial and human terms — to give such a service? Will they consider immediate plans to carry out this task? Will they have the capacity to join forces with private migrant organizations?

The answer to these questions, so to speak, greatly depends on the majority of them regulating their immigration situation and, consequently, continuing to be that pillar which until now has represented remittance transfers for the national economy.