New York Mayor Eric Adams Calls for Migrants’ Right to Work during Latin America Tour

NECOCLÍ, Colombia (AP) — New York Mayor Eric Adams concluded a tour of Latin America on Saturday at the gates of the dangerous Darién Gap jungle and with a call for the United States to give migrants the opportunity to work who arrive in that country every year.

“Nothing is more human and nothing is more American than your right to work, and we believe that it is a right that we must extend,” Adams told journalists gathered in Necocli, a small coastal town in the Colombian Caribbean that for several years has served as a It passes through migrants of different nationalities and is the gateway to Darién, an inhospitable jungle that connects Colombia with Panama.

“If you look at Colombia, we see that they have really shown how to absorb individuals into their societies, and one of the most important ways to do that is to allow people to work,” the mayor added, shortly after flying over the area in a Colombian police helicopter.

For four days, Adams traveled through Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia, on a trip he planned with the intention of trying to dissuade people from seeking asylum in his city.

In Necoclí, Adams observed the migrants from the Immigration office, located a few steps from the pier where boats leave daily for the jungle. After leaving, heavily guarded by police and their escorts, a group of migrants shouted harangues and held signs in English that said: “Migration is not a crime.”

“If he comes to know the route as such that migrants use, then he must take a real tour through the jungle and see everything that we face to get (to the United States), not for pleasure, but for a future.” better for us and for our children,” Venezuelan Sandra Martínez told The Associated Press.

In Necoclí, the fate of migrants is divided between those who have dollars in their pockets and those who do not. Those who have money, including Latin Americans and Asians, sleep in houses or hotels for a rent of at least 10 dollars. The rest remain on the beach with plastic tents or outdoors covered with just a blanket.

New York has become the place of arrival for thousands of migrants. Since spring 2022 alone, there are already more than 122,000 people seeking asylum.

At the beginning of his tour, on Thursday, Adams sent a clear message to migrants from Mexico: “My house is your house,” but “we have no more space” in New York.

On Saturday morning, there was an unusual presence of police upon Adams’ arrival in Necoclí. A few months ago, the presence of Haitians was especially noticeable here; Now you see mostly Venezuelans.

Migrants are often willing to endure great hardship in order to turn their lives in the United States around, despite the fact that President Joe Biden’s government announced this week that it will resume deportations of Venezuelan migrants.

“Yes, we have heard that they are starting to deport people. I say that sometimes it is also a matter of luck… if you come alone you have a good chance of being deported, but if you come with your family it may be a priority. “You pursue your dream until you say, ‘This is as far as it can go,'” Miguel Rubén Camacaro, a 33-year-old Venezuelan, told The Associated Press next to his 3- and 11-year-old children who were trying to take cover from the rain in Necoclí. .

Camacaro, a native of Barquisimeto, dreams of reaching Washington where he has a cousin. However, he has been stranded on the beaches of Colombia for a month waiting to raise $1,200 to get through the jungle.

For each person, the self-proclaimed “guides” charge approximately $350 to take them to “Loma de las Banderas”, where the Colombian border ends and the Panama border begins, the most dangerous journey. In the jungle they are often victims of “coyotes” and risk all kinds of dangers such as rape, extortion, robberies or even death.

Despite the dangers, Camacaro assures that he prefers the jungle to “putting his children through hunger,” which is why he does not mind the call to stop made by the mayor of New York.

For the Venezuelan, someone like Adams “suddenly sees it differently because the situation that is being experienced there (in Venezuela) has not happened.” He says that in his country, he barely earned five dollars a month for driving a bus. .

So Camacaro will remain here until he can continue on his way to the United States.

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2023-10-07 19:56:10
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