Immigrants Must Keep Waiting for Reform

About 1.5 million Guatemalan immigrants in the United States will have to wait for at least a few more months to see how the Obama administration’s immigration reform will turn out.

Yesterday, Congress began its summer recess without having passed long-awaited immigration reform, under which some 11 million undocumented persons from all over the world hoped to become legal citizens. Immigrant organizations are obviously unhappy with the attitude of Congress, as Obama said he hoped the reform would be passed before summer.

“We are at a very critical time and we have to make sure that we are contributing to the victory of the coalition,” said a Washington spokesperson for undocumented immigrant organizations to the United States.*

Meanwhile, in Guatemala, Foreign Minister Fernando Carrara told Siglo.21 that, according to data from the External Affairs portfolio, immigration reform should benefit about 800-900,000 Guatemalans who live and work in the United States.

Although he recognizes that not all Guatemalans will achieve legal status, Carrera states that the fact that the majority of those who arrived in the U.S. after December 2011 will be able to become legal citizens is “already a great victory for us.”

“We don’t have TPS (a temporary protective status that does benefit other Central American immigrants) or anything. That’s the problem. So I must say that immigration reform is a ‘win win’ for Guatemala,” Carrera states.

But not everything seems to be going so well for Guatemalan immigrants. One of their representatives, Marcos Yax, was outraged yesterday when he learned that Guatemala’s Constitutional Court is planning to render current Guatemalan ID cards obsolete in the next few days.

Yax stated that this will cause many Guatemalans to lose the ability to obtain a passport, an indispensable document in the face of immigration reform. In addition, many are complaining that Guatemala’s immigration department is still slow to issue passports.

As you can see, it doesn’t seem that government institutions are taking the best action for Guatemalan residents of the U.S. during a crucial time. Hopefully they will take corrective actions so as not to further complicate the situation.

*Editor’s note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.