New York City announces $20 million fund to assist undocumented workers blocked from relief

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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4/21/1939178/-New-York-City-announces-20-million-fund-to-assist-undocumented-workers-blocked-from-relief

New York City announces $20 million fund to assist undocumented workers blocked from relief
Gabe Ortiz
Daily Kos Staff
Tuesday April 21, 2020 · 2:14 PM EDT


New York City’s mayor and the Open Society Foundations have announced a $20 million program that will assist thousands of undocumented workers in the area who have been affected by the novel coronavirus pandemic. The New York City COVID-19 Immigrant Emergency Relief program makes the city, along with California, among the first localities in the nation to offer financial relief to undocumented workers who’ve been shut out of federal pandemic relief.

“Immigrants are the heart of this City—they are our friends, neighbors and colleagues,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement. “This crisis has shown it is now more important than ever for New Yorkers to look out for each other.”

The Open Society Foundations said its $20 million donation, “to be managed by the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City in partnership with the NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, will work with on-the-ground community organizations to provide direct, one-time emergency relief payments to up to 20,000 immigrant New York City families who are hardest hit financially by the crisis, yet excluded from the reach of the federal relief program—including undocumented workers who play a vital role in the city’s economy.”

The organization “will also provide $2 million to support domestic workers across the United States, through the National Domestic Workers Alliance’s Coronavirus Care Fund, as the organization seeks to support tens of thousands of low-paid home workers—the vast majority of whom are women—whose often informal jobs have disappeared due to the crisis.” That fund has assisted domestic workers like Melissa, a home health aide in Florida. “Every day I wake up and worry about what will happen the next day, the next week. I don’t know how I will make it through,” she recently said in The New York Times. “For now, I am living day to day.”

New York’s immigrant workers and their advocates have been pushing Gov. Andrew Cuomo to follow California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lead and provide urgent relief to families, but he’s so far refused to commit to a plan. “When you are broke, it would be irresponsible to do these things,” Cuomo told an advocate according to Democracy Now. “I do hope and believe the federal government should have a more inclusive policy.” He later told the advocate: “Well, we’re looking at it, but we have real financial problems right now.”

Local organizations like Make the Road New York have been helping undocumented families in the state through a relief fund. Reyna told BuzzFeed News that the group helped her with a $100 gift card to purchase rice, vegetables, and other staples for her family. “I am very grateful for the money I received,” she told BuzzFeed News, but she also said she’s not alone. “There are many families that don’t have any food. This is not just something that is happening to me but to many people around me.”

This is why more must be done, locally and federally, to help families regardless of immigration status all over the U.S. “This emergency funding is a first step,” Open Society Foundations president Patrick Gaspard said. “It is part of what will be a broad and ongoing effort by the Foundations in the months ahead to respond to the economic, social, and political impact of the pandemic. Our response will be shaped by our mission to support those who find themselves pushed to the precarious margins of society even in the best of times.”