Wheaton Latino Rights Group Marches For Legalization Of Workers

WHEATON, IL — Community organizers and activists from around Chicago and from Wheaton-based Immigrant Solidarity DuPage took to downtown streets on Tuesday to push for the legalization of minority essential workers who have found to be at greater risk of contracting the coronavirus.

The march comes at a time when Immigrant Solidarity DuPage officials are seeking for suburban undocumented essential workers to be validated. As Congress continues negotiations with the goal of passing the Budget Reconciliation Bill, local community leaders are seeking for a pathway toward the legalization of undocumented workers to be included in the bill.

About 30 activists and community members from the western suburbs joined Tuesday's march after leaving from Wheaton, organizers said. Organizers of the event expected about 40 community groups seeking Latino rights and fighting for the rights of undocumented workers to participate in the march.

Undocumented Latino workers are often extraordinarily exposed to COVID-19 in local warehouses, restaurants and factories. The group said that statistics show that Latinos were stricken with COVID-19 at a rate of five times higher than white residents and often risk contracting the virus without having unemployment or other government services to help them, organizers said.

Tuesday’s march was about pushing for undocumented workers to be legalized and officials said there has not been any meaningful legislation toward that end in 40 years. They believe the Budget Reconciliation Plan is the best path forward. The Wheaton-based not-for-profit has made it its mission to bring the collective struggles for rights among the Latino community to light.

“We are calling on congress to defend the dignity and decency of the essential workers who make the wheel of the economy spin in Chicago and the west suburbs,” Cristobal Cavazos of Immigrant Solidarity DuPage said in a news release. “ These workers were disproportionately impacted by Covid and on the front lines yesterday and today in area restaurants, factories and warehouses keeping the supply change moving and our communities alive."

Immigrant Solidarity DuPage, along with immigrant rights organizations around the county, is calling for area undocumented works — 74 % of who are essential workers — to be opened a pathway to legalization in the current budget bill .

"Undocumented workers, who we now discover as essential, who kept the country running while the government instructed us to stay home to stop the covid-19 pandemic, pay $32 billion in taxes every year,’ local activist Gabby Hernandez Chico said in the release. "By being in a safe place, people can think of a house, buy a better car, grow their family here or have access to health and that means a greater movement of the economy, a greater movement of dignity and decency.”