Martin O'Malley, a 2016 Democratic hopeful, made an appeal to Latino voters on Wednesday by promoting his plan to reform the country's broken immigration system in order to improve wages for all Americans.

While speaking at a United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce event in Washington, the former Maryland governor pledged to take on the issue within the first 100 days of his administration if he is elected as the president.

"Absolutely," he told the group's president, Javier Palomarez, when asked if addressing immigration would be one of his an immediate priorities, according to The New York Times.

"How are you going to get wages to go up if you allow 11 million people to live in a shadow economy?" O'Malley asked the event.

He continued to say that immigration needs to be discussed as both a national economic and security priority "not for this group or that group, but for us" as a nation.

O'Malley also criticized the Obama administration and, when asked if he was "Ready for Hillary," said that "now the public gets to decide."

O'Malley announced on Saturday that he is running for president. He faces nearly impossible odds in beating the likes of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and leftist favorite Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

On Wednesday, former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee also announced that he is running in the 2016 presidential election in a speech delivered at George Mason University on Wednesday evening. Chafee has spent most of his life as a Republican and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000 as part of the GOP. He served only one term, losing to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in 2006, but then successfully ran for governor of Rhode Island as an independent. He then became a Democrat in 2013.