Press Release
CSS Statement on Excluded Workers Fund
Providing relief to workers excluded from traditional assistance programs is urgently needed now. Undocumented immigrant workers, formerly incarcerated workers, caregivers, and other workers have been denied access to expanded unemployment insurance benefits, stimulus checks, and other forms of federal assistance since the onset of the pandemic.
More than half a million undocumented immigrant workers have been excluded from receiving any kind of federal or state unemployment benefits, despite contributing over $140 million in unemployment taxes annually. These individuals often worked in essential services with greater risk of exposure to COVID-19, endangering themselves and their families. Additionally, 40,000 New Yorkers recently released from incarceration or immigrant detention before or during pandemic are now left with dismal employment prospects as the state battles the pandemic-related recession.
But relief could be on the way. State lawmakers are negotiating the terms of a multi-billion dollar “Excluded Workers Fund” which would represent a historic level of assistance to categories of workers who kept the state’s economy functioning during the pandemic yet suffered income losses over the last year and are not eligible for various federal assistance programs.
The Fund must provide flexibility in how excluded workers demonstrate their eligibility; hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers do not have official employment documents, pay checks, or even bank accounts. Federal policies of the past administration, including the abhorrent public charge rule, have forced undocumented workers to further avoid interacting with formal and institutionalized service providers like banks and credit unions. Further, navigating the maze of requirements to access social services is an onerous burden on most New Yorkers, native-born or otherwise. CSS’s annual survey of low-income New Yorkers, the Unheard Third, revealed that government relief left out those who needed it the most. It would be especially cruel to further encumber and imperil those whom the system has chosen to exclude, by requiring them to produce proof of work-related documentation.
The Community Service Society (CSS) strongly supports this long overdue effort to create an Excluded Workers Fund. Such an investment will provide a timely boost to New York’s recovery while finally providing financial relief for workers who have served as the bedrock of our State’s survival. We call on the State Legislature and Governor Cuomo to support the Fund and ensure that it allows for the over 120,000 excluded workers who have yet to receive a dime in federal and state aid to take full advantage of it.
New York State’s informal economy, where undocumented and other excluded workers are forced to operate, still contributes to the local demand for goods and services and contributes significantly to state GDP. Providing necessary financial relief to these workers is not only a matter of economic justice, but of ensuring an equitable and inclusive recovery for all New Yorkers.
On a final note, CSS is disappointed to learn that budget negotiations have broken down over the proposal to provide $20 million in state-only dollars to provide health coverage to immigrants with COVID through the end of the public health emergency. This proposal makes good public health sense, and yet the negotiations have broken down over a late night “poison pill” that would require federal permission and funds to implement. That is unlikely to happen given the current national anti-immigrant climate. A missed opportunity to expand critically needed health care to vulnerable New Yorkers.