With polls showing increasing disapproval of President Joe Biden’s handling of the surge of Central Americans at the border, immigration groups around the country are rallying this week around two bills that would create a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.

“We are caregivers, educators, hospitality, agricultural, transportation and health care workers, and more importantly, we are taxpayers with families who contribute to the development of our communities,” said William Joel Bravo, the deputy political director for the Florida Immigrant Coalition at a press conference Tuesday in front of the U.S. Federal Building in Tampa.

Similar press events have been taking place across the country over the past week as part of the March to Victory: Relay Across America campaign, which is advocating support for two specific pieces of immigration-related legislation.

One bill is the SECURE Act, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for the hundreds of thousands of people with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the U.S.

The other is the Citizenship for Essential Workers Act, which would create an expedited pathway to citizenship for what the bill sponsors say are the more than five million undocumented essential workers who kept the country “healthy, fed and safe” during the pandemic.

Among those attending the Tampa press conference was Cirenio Cervantes, a 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipient who graduated from USF in 2018 with a degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology.

“We know that the epidemic hit everybody hard, especially undocumented immigrants in this country,” Cervantes told reporters. “They have had no choice but to work during the pandemic. There are farmworkers. These are people in the front line at the moment, right? And so they’re always left out, and so they do need a pathway to citizenship.”

The rally took place as polls show that a majority of Americans disapprove of President Biden’s handling of the surge of Central Americans at the border. A Washington Post/ABC News poll published last week found 53% of respondents said they disapprove at least somewhat of the job that Biden has done handling the immigration situation.

Those poll numbers have critics pouncing.

“This is hardly the time to be discussing (immigration reform),” said Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). “The priority on immigration ought to be on getting control of the border and ending that healthcare national security humanitarian disaster that the administration has created.”

“I don’t think Republicans and even some moderate Dems have any appetite for broad immigration policy when you have a Southern border crisis,” adds Amanda Makki, a former Republican congressional candidate in Pinellas County. “It has been a crisis that has largely been ignored.”

Biden also revoked most immigration restrictions that former President Donald Trump imposed last year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. That was a mistake, says Makki.

“If you looked at the numbers,” they worked she says, referring to fewer people who were crossing the border under the former administration.

“We do understand that people are going to say ‘the border,’” said Cervantes. “But the reality is that these people are our neighbors. They are our families. They have been working during this pandemic.”

The press event was held in front of the federal building, which houses the Tampa district offices of both of Florida’s U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott. Spectrum Bay News 9 reached out to both GOP Senators for comment.

Rubio’s office directed us to a statement the senator made after the Biden team announced, before he had even taken office, that he was proposing a plan for a pathway to citizenship to virtually all undocumented people (estimated to be around 11 million).

“There are many issues that I think we can work cooperatively with President-elect Biden, but a blanket amnesty for people who are here unlawfully isn’t going to be one of them,” Rubio said. 

A spokesperson in Senator Scott’s sent a statement that said that he supports legal immigration and a permanent solution for DACA.

“Immigration reform becomes much more simple once the border is secure, and that’s where the conversation must begin. President Biden and the Democrats caused this border crisis with their radical open borders and amnesty policies — which hurts hardworking Americans and the millions of undocumented immigrants going through the legal process.”

The Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives did pass two immigration bills last month that face an uncertain destiny in the Senate. 

One is the American Dream and Promise Act which would give permanent legal status to “dreamers” like Cirenio Cervantes. The other was the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would allow more than a million farmworkers and their families to apply for a temporary and renewable immigration status if they have worked at least 180 days in the U.S. over a two-year period.

One speaker at the press conference called on Florida’s senators to stand behind previous statements.

“Both of them say on their websites that their goal is to protect the American dream from people who see it slipping away,” said John Stewart with Pax Christi Tampa Bay. 

“Both of these bills would do that,” he said, referring to the SECURE Act and the Citizenship for Essential Workers Act.