DENVER — One of the Mile High City's top chefs is serving up more than Michelin-starred cuisine; he’s lending his support to a bipartisan effort at immigration reform.
Born in Costa Rica, Byron Gomez arrived in the U.S. with his parents at 8 years old. He grew up in New York and received an education at the school of hard knocks.
"It's a very, very hard city, but it teaches you a lot of lessons that now are the core of who I am," Gomez said.
When he was 15, he got a job at Burger King and realized he wanted a career preparing food for people. He started learning and eventually found himself working for some of the best chefs in the world.
“No culinary school, no formal training, just kind of trying to better myself each day,” Gomez told Denver7's Brandon Richard.
His career rose to another level after he appeared on Bravo’s “Top Chef.”
“It was the fastest self-growth that I've done in my life in a period of seven weeks,” Gomez said. “It was the most humbling but yet challenging times. The thing that they don't tell you about ‘Top Chef’ is [it’s] physically draining. It really is.”
Having done everything he felt he could do in New York, including working at a three-star Michelin restaurant, he came to Colorado.
“I was a small fish in the big pond in New York City. Maybe I have something in me, all this training that I could bring to Colorado,” he said.
After working in Aspen, he moved to Denver to become the executive chef at BRUTØ, one of just six restaurants in Colorado with a coveted Michelin star for exceptional food quality.
“I always want to treat this as an internship,” he said. “I always want to be a student of my craft.”
He’s been able to have these experiences for the past decade in the U.S. thanks to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The program provides people who were brought to the U.S. as children with temporary protection from deportation.
While DACA has given him many opportunities, including being able to open a checking account, there are limitations: he has to renew his DACA status every two years.
“Planning your life in two-year increments could sound very exhausting,” Gomez said.
He said what’s needed is comprehensive immigration reform, something Congress has not been able to pass in decades. But there’s a renewed push.
Colorado Congressman Gabe Evans has introduced a bipartisan bill alongside 20 other lawmakers. The Dignity Act would not provide immigrants with citizenship, but instead would give those who arrived in the U.S. before 2021 a pathway to legal status, allowing them to stay and work.
Read our previous coverage about the Dignity Act below:
- Rep. Gabe Evans introduces bill to provide legal status for some undocumented immigrants
- Colorado Congressman Gabe Evans picks up support for immigration reform bill
To qualify, they would have to pass a criminal background check and pay $7,000 in restitution over seven years.
"We know this is something that is critical,” Evans said. “Not just for those immigrants who are looking for that pathway forward, but for the American economy."
Gomez said the bill isn’t perfect.
“We have to pay $1,000 every year to be part of this program on top of paying our taxes, on top of everything that a typical American will pay,” he said.
However, he’s glad to see lawmakers having a conversation that he says is long overdue.
“We're starting a conversation,” Gomez said. “It's not being swept underneath the rug. And something has to come out of that. We are at a better place than we were five years ago.”
The bill has been referred to committees and, much like Gomez and thousands of others, is now awaiting its fate.
