Weston, Florida – The president of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, said Thursday that the Venezuelan ruler, Nicolás Maduro, "must leave, the faster the better," and urged to give as soon as possible a migratory benefit to the Venezuelans arrived to this country.
During a meeting in the Florida city of Weston with the Venezuelan community, Pelosi said that Maduro and his allies, including Russia and Cuba, "want to destroy faith in democracy" and, therefore, "the battle for Venezuela is for democracy everywhere and certainly in the hemisphere. "
Pelosi referred to the project approved in the lower house of Congress, controlled by the Democrats, to grant a Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Venezuelans fleeing the crisis in their country so they can work and live legally in the US.
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The project must now go through the Senate, which is under the control of Republicans.
Just this Thursday, Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott asked Pelosi on Twitter for the Democrats to give the green light to the amendment to this bill he presented last week in the Senate and was rejected.
This amendment proposes that TPS be granted for a period of 18 months and requires Congress approval for extensions of this permit and for no more than 18 months.
The president of the lower house recalled that the TPS is temporary in relation to the condition of the country from which its beneficiaries come from and in the case of Venezuela it was questioned whether there is a guarantee that in 18 months the political and social crisis will be fixed that suffers.
He said that "I help you at the moment" as some politicians put it "is not enough", and that the proposed amendment is almost "temporarily temporary".
At the meeting with members of the Venezuelan community, estimated at 200,000 people in Florida, Pelosi was accompanied, among others, by Democratic legislators Donna Shalala, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who also criticized the position of Republicans in the Senate.
Wasserman even said that Scott's amendment involves aligning with the "crooked immigration policy" of President Donald Trump, which is "unacceptable," more in view of the recent elimination of TPS to immigrants from other countries announced by the Federal Administration. .
Pelosi said his party has issued other initiatives aimed at alleviating the situation of Venezuelans inside and outside the country in the face of "a cancerous regime."
He pointed out that since the Democrats had a majority in the Lower House they did not hesitate to recognize as interlocutor the Venezuelan National Assembly, which is led by Juan Guaidó, recognized as the interim president of the Latin American country for more than fifty countries.
Also participating in the meeting in Weston was the ambassador of the "interim" Government of Venezuela in Washington, Carlos Vecchio.
The creation of what he defined as "the most important international coalition since World War II", created against Maduro, was one of the aspects highlighted by Vecchio.
The representative of Guaidó defended the need for a bipartisan unit in the US. to address the situation in Venezuela that has given rise to the "biggest refugee crisis in this continent."
"We must increase the pressure on the Maduro regime and recover our country, on that depends the future of Latin America in the next 20 or 30 years," Vecchio warned, after stressing that the United States should not underestimate the threat that Maduro poses.
Lawmakers pointed out the priority of the situation in Venezuela for the Democratic Party, under the command of a "narco regime," as Mucarsel-Powell said, while Wasserman and Shalala highlighted the need to press for Russia and Cuba not to intervene in Venezuelan affairs.
"It is clear, Maduro must leave, the faster the better," Pelosi summed up.
In a subsequent press conference, the president of the House of Representatives said Thursday that President Donald Trump is "undermining our national security" by asking the Chinese government to investigate the family of former vice president and presidential candidate Joe Biden.
"With his comments the president is undermining and endangers our national security," said Pelosi.
