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Migrant Farmworkers Lobby Florida Reps For Immigration Reform

Cyd Hoskinson
/
WJCT

About a dozen migrant farmworkers traveling around Florida to drum up support for the federal immigration reform passed by the U.S. Senate will be in Jacksonville this weekend.

Spokesperson Tirso Moreno says the "Remember November" group plans to visit each of Florida’s 27 Congressional Districts to personally make their case for reform to state representatives while they are in their districts during the August recess.

Moreno says they are relying on people who are sympathetic to their cause to provide them with food and shelter along the way.

"We don’t have a budget but we’re farmworkers. We have done these things to support our family," he said.

Credit Cyd Hoskinson / WJCT
/
WJCT
The "Remember November" caravan.

"We travel around following the crops and sometimes we don’t have a house. We have to stay in cars, in parks. So, I mean, we’re accustomed, in a way, to the hard life."

Moreno says the group hit the road August 4th in Pensacola and expects to wrap-up on September 8th in Central Florida.

The reform measure approved by the Senate in June would provide a path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. It would also let undocumented immigrants who came here as children earn a green card within 5 years.

The bill is currently stalled in the Republican controlled House of Representatives.

Cyd Hoskinson began working at WJCT on Valentine’s Day 2011.