Good afternoon, my name is Flor González, I am an immigrant from Mexico and I have lived in the city of Reading in Pennsylvania for 22 years. I am a member leader of Make the Road Pennsylvania, where we fight for the respect and dignity of our communities. I have 3 children between 20, 12, and 10 years old. Today my youngest daughter Yareli is with me. I have been working for the same company for 10 years and make $7.25 an hour cutting mushrooms. Workers like me were called essential workers during the pandemic, but we are treated as anything but essential. As you can imagine, $7.25 an hour is worth much less now than it was 10 years ago. I am here today because through you I want President Biden to hear my voice because the need for a path to citizenship has never been more urgent and important and we need immigration reform this year.
The United States, the richest country in the history of humanity, has a broken immigration system, where more than 11 million people are locked in a system of exclusion, where people like me are denied our basic human rights and our human dignity. This country urgently needs immigration reform, that is why today I am calling on President Biden to work with Congress to update the registration date so that those of us who have made a life here and our children are born here, have a way to citizenship and we can aspire to a better salary and stop being excluded.
My dream is to live without fear, with the dignity and respect that every human being deserves. My dream is to have a legal status, so that I can have a better salary and so that my family can save to buy a house, so that our children have a suitable and safe place and we do not have to move frequently. We need immigration reform because people like me deserve a better quality of life and to come out of the shadows. With legal status, I could go out on the streets without fear of being detained and deported by ICE, separating me from my family.
Although I cannot vote, I have the power of my voice and will continue to use it as a leader in my community. My message to President Biden is that now is the time to fulfill his promises of citizenship and to take leadership on this issue to allow all 11 million people the opportunity to live with the dignity that every human being deserves. I invite President Biden to be the first president to keep his campaign promises to give a path to citizenship. Thanks.
To read more about Make the Road States going to the white house to fight for the 11 million undocumented people READ HERE.