(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- About 200 people rallied near 18th Street in Pilsen Thursday to demand work permits for undocumented immigrants.
Local elected officials joined immigrant workers, community members and other leaders to urge the Biden Administration to help undocumented immigrants now that the president has put many asylum seekers on a faster track to obtain work permits.
Chicago is home to more than 180,000 undocumented workers, part of a larger group of more than 11 million in the United States, organizers said.
Mahalia Velasco says that her father, undocumented and working in the U.S. for decades, was never offered a work permit. She said he was deported more than a decade ago.
“He still paid his taxes and he still worked hard every single day of his life, just like many of our people,” Velasco said.
And while she is not old enough yet to vote, she said that her siblings are and there is a larger push to register and organize the Latino vote.
The rally was organized by The Resurrection Project.
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