Yanira Merino has been elected president of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), the leading national organization for Latino(a) workers and their families. Merino is the first woman and first immigrant to serve as President of LCLAA. In 2000 she began her work as the National Immigration Coordinator for the Laborer’s (LiUNA). She has since worked in numerous organizing campaigns, as well as in immigration efforts and Central America Solidarity in the U.S. Yanira Merino was born in El Salvador, she immigrated to the U.S. in the 1990s at the time of an ongoing war at home. She joined the U.S. labor movement when she and co-workers organized a union to confront poverty wages, wage theft, discrimination, and unsafe conditions at a shrimp factory where they worked in Los Angeles.