Cuomo Urged to Provide COVID-19 Economic Relief to Undocumented Workers

Day laborer and other advocacy groups are calling on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to provide COVID-19 relief funding for undocumented immigrant workers across the state, pointing to California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent announcement that California will designate $125 million in relief funds to its undocumented immigrants.

“It is critical that New York provide safety net support to all individuals, regardless of federal immigration status,” wrote the the National Day Laborer Organizing Network in a letter delivered to Cuomo’s office Friday and signed by 50 organizations that the group said work closely with day laborers and low-wage workers in New York, including the New York Civil Liberties Union.

“Thousands of immigrants across NY have lost their jobs and have no income to rely on or income support,” the letter added. “Still, tens of thousands more continue to work in frontline work without access to health care or income support, although they are doing the very work that allows many New Yorkers to stay safe at home.”

“My employer closed down his business weeks ago. He won’t return my calls. My daughters ask me what we will do, and it breaks my heart because I cannot tell them,” said a Yonkers immigrant worker, Jose Antonio, in a media call Friday organized by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, according to a news release giving quotes from the call.

“I don’t know what we will do,” said Antonio.

On Thursday, Cuomo was asked by media about Newsom’s decision to provide $500 each to 150,000 illegal immigrants (with an additional $500 available to related households) in his state that do not receive any assistance under the $2.2 trillion stimulus package recently approved by President Donald Trump and Congress, according to the New York Post. “We’re looking into it but we have real financial problems,” Cuomo said when pressed, the Post reported, adding that he also said, “The federal government should have a more inclusive policy.”

Cuomo’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

For the advocacy groups who signed onto the letter sent by email to Cuomo, his answers have not been good enough.

The National Day Laborer network said in one of its news releases Friday that Cuomo, in its view, is “deflect[ing] from questions” on the issue. The group added that the media call in which immigrant workers gave personal accounts and stories was another way that the workers could talk about “the impact of coronavirus and demand[] that Governor Cuomo ensure that … undocumented workers have access to sick leave, unemployment insurance, necessary protective gear, and all testing, treatment and relief.”

In the letter to Cuomo, the dozens of groups wrote that “the coronavirus pandemic is bringing the dangerous hypocrisy of trumpism into full focus: The crisis makes clear that undocumented workers—including day laborers, janitors, restaurant workers, health care staff, domestic workers, farmworkers, factory and construction workers—are all essential workers.”

The letter continued, “In order to address our current economic crisis and effectively spur demand in our local communities, it is critical that New York provide safety net support to all individuals,” and the groups in the letter said that among various options for relief, New York State could:

• Create a “Temporary Wage Replacement Program” for workers excluded from unemployment insurance. “This fund should provide income replacement for individuals who have lost wages due to COVID-19 but are excluded from unemployment insurance using a fund of state dollars, or unrestricted federal funds,” said the groups.

• Allocate funds to community-based organizations and partner organizations within New York to distribute food, service and other supports for workers and families.

• Provide immediate cash relief for those affected by the pandemic through organizations and trusted partners. “This emergency funding, like stimulus funding, should be available quickly, in order to allow community members to stay,” the groups added in the letter.

The network said in a news release that New York State has nearly 750,000 undocumented immigrants, with about one in 12 U.S. citizen children in New York living with at least one undocumented family member.

It also claimed that “undocumented workers pay an estimated $1 billion annually in state and local taxes in New York, and yet they are currently left out of federal and state relief programs”—including, according to the letter to Cuomo, federal stimulus payments, state unemployment benefits, federal Disaster Unemployment Assistance and most temporary leave and disability payments.