At the largest amnesty workshop to date in Los Angeles, government officials from Mexico and El Salvador advised illegal immigrants, some of whom had criminal records, on President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty program.
Described as a “coming-out party” for nearly 5,000 illegal immigrants, “representatives from the consulates of Mexico and El Salvador” reportedly joined various pro-amnesty activists and organizations at the Los Angeles Convention Center for what will be a three-day immigrant rights event. The majority of the country’s illegal immigrants are from Mexico while the vast majority of illegal immigrants who were apprehended this summer arrived from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
Various amnesty workshops have been held from coast to coast as amnesty advocates try to inform nearly five million illegal immigrants that they can receive Obama’s executive amnesty.
According to the Los Angeles Times, one illegal immigrant woman asked whether she could qualify for Obama’s executive amnesty if she had a DUI. She was told, “apologetically,” that she would not. Nearly 450,000 illegal immigrants in Los Angeles are expected to qualify for Obama’s executive amnesty, but “major questions, including what kinds of criminal records might disqualify an applicant, still loom.”
Echoing what Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) has emphasized, Angelica Salas, the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, reportedly said, “We’re telling all our families to get ready to apply if they qualify, because the more families apply, the harder it is for Republicans to take it away.”
Critics of Obama’s executive amnesty have said Democrats just want more “undocumented Democrats” to ultimately be eligible to vote. And Salas also emphasized that point, saying that “all those children are going to be voters… and those voters are going to remember who stood with their dad and their mom.”