Luis Alvarado worked, walked and bussed his way through two continents for a better life. After arriving in Denver a year ago, he's finally permitted to work.
Luis Alvarado worked, walked and bussed his way through two continents for a better life. After arriving in Denver a year ago, he's finally permitted to work.
For those who arrived after July 31, there are two options: work while awaiting a judge to hear their asylum cases in four to five months, or enter the U.S. on parole with U.S Customs and Border Protection and work while waiting for a judge to hear their immigration case. He became a police officer in 2003, when he was twenty years old. At the time, Venezuela was ruled by Huge Chavez; Alvarado remembers that Chavez's socialist policies kept individuals from owning two cars but welcomed large American oil and aeronautic companies.
"It was turned into a cell," he says."They put a gate over the door. They took out the windows. 24/7, you lived there."Luis Alvarado left behind a wife and three children in Venezuela, but now that he has a work permit, he hopes to bring them to the U.S.No one ever told Alvarado why was arrested. To this day, Alvarado says he doesn't know why. No one told his wife, four months pregnant at the time, or his two children of his arrest or where he was.
His cousins convinced him that life would be easier in the United States. Unwilling to move back to Venezuela for fear of being arrested again, Alvarado first moved to Cucuta, Colombia, in 2022 to be closer to his family and begin saving up for the journey to the U.S. via bus. Alvarado rescued the two, he says, but American immigration officials detained him thinking he was with the rest of the group trying to cross. Immigration officials held him for 23 hours before talking to him, and that's when he declared his plans to apply for asylum for him and his family.
Alvarado was allowed to select where his asylum case would be heard, so he picked Denver knowing it would be his final destination as he expected to find his cousins in Thornton. He told his cousins he was released into the U.S., but because the two worked busy schedules on a ranch, they wouldn't be able to meet him.
Alvarado didn't have a problem with the arrangement."He gave me the option, and it didn't matter. $14, $15 an hour — I'll get to work," he says."At least I'll have something consistent." After January, Alvarado looked for any work he could, but it wasn't consistent. Despite the low pay of his previous jobs, Alvarado liked the routine paycheck.
Finally, on March 20, one of Alvarado's five roommates at his Mar Lee apartment introduced him to a bilingual lawyer. She had helped Alvarado's roommate apply for TPS, and offered to do the same for Alvarado at a rate he could afford: $1,500 broken into biweekly payments of $450 in addition to a $150 initial payment.
Alvarado has already applied to three jobs: maintenance for apartments and offices, roofing and vehicle mechanic.
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