‘Historic investment.’ California makes history with food benefits for undocumented residents
California will become the first state to provide undocumented residents over age 55 with statesubsidized food assistance benefits.
On Sunday night, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced an agreement on the 20222023 state budget, which includes $35.2 million in funding to expand the California Food Assistance Program to low-income people 55 years and older, regardless of immigration status; the funding is expected to increase to $113.4 million annually in 2025-26.
“California is once again making history by removing xenophobic exclusions to our state’s safety net,” Betzabel Estudillo, senior advocate at Nourish California, said in a news release. “This move towards equitable access to our food and nutrition state safety net will help reduce hunger and mitigate poverty.”
About 75,000 people will benefit from the expanded food assistance benefits by 2025-26, according to a February analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Analysts’ Office. Children and adults under the age of 55 will remain ineligible for the benefits.
Estudillo told The Bee/ Calmatters earlier this month that excluding undocumented individuals under age 55 was “not the equitable thing to do.”
“We need to be able to cover a whole family unit,” she said.
The news comes at a time that the state is expanding, or considering expanding, other benefits to undocumented Californians.
The 2022-2023 budget also makes California the first state to remove immigration status as a barrier to health care. All low-income undocumented residents, regardless of age, will now be eligible for state-subsidized insurance.
And undocumented Californians may soon be eligible for unemployment benefits.
The state Senate is currently reviewing a bill that would create the Excluded Workers
Pilot Program, a twoyear program that would run from 2024-2026 and provide unemployment benefits to undocumented workers who lose their job or have their hours reduced during 2024. The bill, which passed in the Assembly, has a Senate Judiciary committee hearing scheduled for Tuesday.
Food insecurity among undocumented Californians
While anti-hunger advocates with the Food4all campaign applauded the news, they said the policy doesn’t go far enough. The campaign is a coalition of immigrant and food anti-hunger advocates that want to see expanded food assistance to all immigrants, regardless of age or status.
“Thanks to this historic investment, California is one step closer to the Food4all Coalition’s vision to remove unjust exclusions from our state’s social safety net programs,” Benyamin Chao, Health & Public Benefits Policy Analyst at California Immigrant Policy Center, said in a press release announcing the news.
“Amid rising food costs and alarming rates of food insecurity, it is heartbreaking that hundreds of thousands of Californians below the age of 55 will continue to be left out of our most powerful anti-hunger programs,” Chao said.
About 45% of undocumented Californians are currently experiencing food insecurity, according to a recent research brief from the Food4all campaign in partnership with the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Research found that individuals under age 55 experience the highest rates of food insecurity: Nearly two out of every three undocumented children and nearly half (46%) of adults aged 2749 are affected by food insecurity.
Food4all advocates estimate that nearly 1 in 6 California children live with at least one undocumented parent, and say that children who receive Calfresh do better academically, which improves long-term health and economic outcomes.
Central Valley residents respond to the news
Food access and security has long been a challenge in the Central San Joaquin Valley, and the pandemic only made the situation worse.
Elected leaders and community members from the Central Valley celebrated the news on Monday, and said it’s important for farmworkers and immigrants of all backgrounds to be included in the state’s safety net.
“Hunger knows no border, no race, no nationality, and with the inclusion of Food4all in this year’s budget, California moves closer to stamping out hunger,” state Sen. Melissa Hurtado, a Democrat from Sanger, said in a news release Monday.
Hurtado is also paying attention to how climate change could impact food access.
“As drought intensifies, the cost of food will rise — further increasing food insecurity across California,” said Hurtado. “This funding in the budget will help us address this crisis and ensure that those who need help, regardless of their immigration status, will have access to assistance.”
Ana Alfaro, assistant coordinator for immigrant entrepreneurship at the Central Valley Immigrant Integration Collaborative, said in a news release Monday that as the country’s most agriculturally productive state, California should be able to support all needy residents – especially those that toil in the fields to feed the rest of the country.
“California leads the country as the largest producer of agricultural products,” Alfaro said. “It is contradictory that many of these farmers and their families do not have access to food.”