NEW YORK.- With special roots in New York City, where he has family, the elected governor of Puebla, Mexico, Alejandro Armenta, affirms that he will seek better coordination with the Big Apple government to help immigrants.
Armenta met Thursday morning with Mayor Eric Adams, whom he referred to as a man attached to the Hispanic community.
“The meeting we had with the mayor of New York was very important […] a very generous man, very, very simple, with great appreciation for the Hispanic community and the people of Puebla, the Mexicans, and we also went with the ambassador of forgiveness, with the mayor of Yonkers,” he said in an interview.
Mayor Adams’ office released photographs of the meeting, which also included Mexican Consul General Jorge Islas López, to explore plans to strengthen ties.
Armenta, from the Let’s Make History coalition, which leads the Morena party, won with 59.3% of the votes over his main competitor, Eduardo Rivera Pérez, from the PRI-PAN-PRD coalition.
Voting from abroad faced several challenges, particularly on June 2, election day. Armenta received 6,232 votes of the 9,967 cast from abroad for Governor.
Armenta visits New York City and other points in New Jersey to meet with migrant populations from Puebla.
“The relationship is very important, we will later seek a meeting with the Governor of the State of New York [Kathy Hochul]”Because we want to twin New York with Puebla, it would be very important for the cultural, artistic, and social aspects,” he said in an interview via Zoom on the way to New Jersey.
He added that in September he will return to New York to lead a forum that addresses immigrants’ concerns, including a new service model.
“In the forum that we are going to hold in September, we are going to dialogue with working groups so that the people of Puebla, the Mexicans who live here in New York, are the ones who help establish the model of care that they need, of course, there are guidelines , the Civil Registry, attention to funeral services, etc., but there are other topics that only they know they need and that we want to listen to them,” he explained.
Mi Casa es Puebla, the state representation in New York, will have a reorganization to improve service.
“The forum is a democratic act where citizens organize so that attention is more precise to their needs,” Armenta defended.
The economy and investments
Visibly excited, Armenta said he is interested in promoting a plan that helps immigrant entrepreneurs to invest more easily in the state.
“We have a large attraction of foreign direct investment [en Puebla], Chinese, American, English, Canadian and German, mainly by car manufacturers. So in Puebla we give it a lot of priority, concessions with tax donations, we give them land, we support with income foreign companies that come to settle in Puebla. Well, now the time has come to support Puebla businessmen who want to invest in Puebla and who are abroad or in Puebla,” he expressed.
He pointed out that tax benefits and other investment facilities will be viable for Puebla entrepreneurs.
“So our brothers, who are already part of the chambers of commerce of Yonkers, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Las Vegas, New York, New Jersey, will be able to be part of the economy of the economic development of Puebla, with investments that will be protected by the State Government and promoted by the State Government,” he explained.
That plan was presented at a meeting with immigrants in Astoria, a Queens neighborhood with a high Hispanic population, including Mexicans originally from Puebla.
Better care planned from the US
Armenta insisted on his promise to improve care for immigrants, whom he celebrated for sending remittances.
What will make it different from other governments? he was asked.
“The difference is going to be the closeness and the model that we are going to build together,” he stated. “It is a mistake to believe from Puebla what the Pueblan brothers and their families may need; “It is a mistake to design a care policy from a place other than where you are, so what we are going to do is a forum in September.”
He added that the Mi Casa es Puebla in New York, Chicago, Illinois will be integrated into the attention model to be designed, in addition to there being one in Los Angeles, California.