Celebrity Chef José Andrés Urges Immigrants to Become Citizens

National Journal

By Alexia Fernandez Campbell

December 17, 2015

Celebrity Chef José Andrés Urges Immigrants to Become Citizens

Famed Spanish restaurateur and chef José An­drés ar­rived in the United States in 1991 with $50 and a set of cooking knives. Now he has 21 res­taur­ants across the coun­try in places like Miami and Wash­ing­ton.

An­drés, who be­came a U.S. cit­izen two years ago, is one of Pres­id­ent Obama’s first of­fi­cial am­bas­sad­ors for cit­izen­ship and naturalization. This pretty much means that he is tasked with in­spir­ing and en­cour­aging eli­gible im­mig­rants to take the oath of cit­izen­ship.

The White House cam­paign is part of Obama’s Task Force on New Amer­ic­ans, a new gov­ern­ment-wide ef­fort to aimed at bet­ter in­teg­rat­ing im­mig­rants and refugees in­to Amer­ic­an com­munit­ies (and pre­sum­ably, in­creas­ing the num­ber of eli­gible voters).

Re­cent im­mig­ra­tion data shows that more than 8 mil­lion people are eli­gible to be­come U.S. cit­izens, but haven’t taken the leap. That in­cludes more than 3 mil­lion refugees who have re­settled in the United States since 1975.

An­drés ar­rived from North­ern Spain on an E-2 in­vestor visa, and has be­come an out­spoken ad­voc­ate for im­mig­rants and crit­ic of Don­ald Trump’s anti-im­mig­rant rhet­or­ic.

In a video released this week by the White House, An­drés urged viewers to take the step to becoming American citizens.

“Don’t wait, do it,” An­drés said. “You are help­ing move Amer­ica for­ward. You are part of the DNA of what Amer­ica is all about. You need to become a citizen because  we need you to keep be­ing a part of everything you’ve been fight­ing for.”

An­drés is one of the first four cit­izen­ship ambassadors picked by the White House. These are the other three:

Grammy Award-win­ning sing­er Dave Mat­thews, who was born in South Africa and moved to the United States when he was 18.

Act­ress Di­ane Guer­rero, known for play­ing the roles of Mar­itza Ramos on the Net­flix series Or­ange is the New Black and Lina on Jane the Vir­gin. Guer­rero’s fam­ily is from Colom­bia and she grew up in Bo­ston.

Fernando Valen­zuela, base­ball play­er and sports broad­caster. Valen­zuela, a nat­ive of Mex­ico, pitched for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the early 1980s and led the team to the World Series. In Ju­ly, he and his wife became American citizens.

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com