Frustration for those here illegally who are hoping for aid.
Relief fund was set up to help noncitizens ineligible for unemployment or federal money
When the coronavirus crisis hit, Maria already was living on the edge. The 60-year-old volunteer sexual assault counselor had been sleeping in her car and at friends’ homes in Oakland for nearly four years, while eking out a living as a janitor at a music venue.
Then in March she lost her job when the pandemic forced the venue to close, and the spreading virus made people less willing to offer her shelter. She felt overwhelmed.
“You don’t have food. You don’t have a place to live. You don’t have clothes to wear,” said Maria, who asked that her last name not be published because she is here illegally. “There’s so many things that frustrate you; it drives you crazy.”
When she heard about a new California program handing out one-time payments of $500 to workers here illegally who are affected by the coronavirus, she hoped the money would relieve some of her stress. But she has had no luck getting through. The program began taking applications May 18, and Maria has called the hotline dozens of
times. Each time, she has been kicked off the line after five minutes, with a recorded message telling her to try again later.
Maria is hardly alone. More than a month after the program began, hundreds of thousands of Californians here illegally still are finding it nearly impossible to get a live person on the phone.
“It’s really saddening and, I know, incredibly frustrating for folks who are desperate for support right now,” said Derek Schoonmaker, an attorney at Oakland’s Centro Legal de la Raza, which provides legal services to immigrants and other low-income people.
Most of his clients here illegally have tried to apply to receive the money, but few have succeeded. And as the pandemic drags on, he’s seeing clients increasingly burdened by crushing debt. “Even if they are back at work,” he said, “they’re still trying to dig themselves out of a hole.”
When Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the state’s Disaster Relief Assistance for Immigrants in April, the $75 million fund received national attention as the first government program to offer pandemic relief to immigrants here illegally.
Progressives praised the idea of providing assistance to a particularly vulnerable segment of the workforce that was devastated when restaurants, hotels and other hospitality businesses trimmed staff or closed. Nearly 10% of the state’s workforce consists of people here illegally.
But conservative activists filed suit to block the program, arguing that taxpayers’ money shouldn’t be used to help people who aren’t in the country legally.
The state Supreme Court dismissed the suit in early May. That enabled California to deputize 12 nonprofit organizations throughout the state to process applications and distribute the funds. Catholic Charities of California is now handing out $15 million in eight Bay Area counties.
Running the program has been a “Herculean task,” said Liza Cardinal Hand, the agency’s associate director of communications and marketing. “The demand far outweighs the dollars.”
Because the state required that all applications be submitted by phone, Catholic Charities created an assistance hotline for Bay Area applicants. The day the program went live, both the state’s website providing information about the program and Catholic Charities’ hotline crashed under the weight of hundreds of thousands of would-be applicants.
Since Catholic Charities restored its phone system, about 20 staffers have answered calls for 12 hours a day, six days a week. To date, they have taken more than 3 million calls and have approved more than 20,000 applications.
The new fund will provide assistance for only 150,000 of the estimated 2 million immigrants living illegally in California.
Some critics say the program would have run more smoothly if applicants could have filed for the money online. But state officials have defended their decision to set up a phone system, arguing that it provides equal access to applicants with or without access to computers and the internet.
Grim statistics
Workers living here illegally have faced some of the harshest economic impacts of the pandemic. From February to May, nearly 1 in 3 such workers in California lost their job, compared with about 1 in 6 legal residents, according to a report from UC Merced’s Community and Labor Center.
The report estimates that nearly 360,000 workers living here illegally are unemployed because of COVID-19.
Those immigrants are ineligible for most federal and state programs such as unemployment insurance, coronavirus related stimulus payments and food stamps, so California’s nonprofits have created their own assistance funds.
Centro De La Raza created a fund for workers living here illegally in April, but it closed applications less than a month later after being inundated with thousands of requests.
So far, the organization has provided more than $700,000 to applicants.
“We’re eventually going to go back to normal, whatever normal looks like. But I think that immigrant communities are going to be feeling the effects of this for a really long time.” — Claudia Suarez, East Oakland Dreamers co-founder
Out to raise $50M
Some of that money came from the California Immigrant Resilience Fund, a private relief fund promoted by Newsom and administered by Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees. The national organization committed to raising $50 million in philanthropic donations to be distributed to California nonprofits.
East Oakland Dreamers received a grant and is distributing money to migrant youth affected by the pandemic. The nonprofit usually operates with a budget of less than $3,000. Since the creation of the migrant youth support fund in March, however, the nonprofit has raised over $150,000.
“At the end of the day, migrants really rely on community aid,” said East Oakland Dreamers co-founder Claudia Suarez, who hopes to raise enough money to continue the program into the fall.
“We’re eventually going to go back to normal, whatever normal looks like,” she said. “But I think that immigrant communities are going to be feeling the effects of this for a really long time.”