So many undocumented families rushed to apply for emergency grants under California’s new disaster relief fund that some phone lines for the dozen nonprofit organizations tasked with handling applications crashed due to demand, The New York Times reports.
Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, one of the dozen groups, said it received 630,000 calls in the span of just a few hours on Monday, the first day that local families who were shut out of federal packages could apply for up to $1,000 in relief. “We knew the number of applicants would be high,” executive director Angelica Salas told The Times, “but we were just overwhelmed.”
Among the workers who rushed to apply on Monday was Adolfo Luna, a singer and musician who performs at weddings and other celebrations but has lost his income due to the pandemic. “Since March, Mr. Luna, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, has been trying to find construction work, factory work or any other work, to no avail,” The Times reported. “Going on three months without a gig, he barely made the rent and for the first time missed his car-insurance payment.”
But Luna was among the countless callers who spent hours on the phone without any luck, finally deciding to go to the organization’s office in person to add his name to a callback list. Nidia Preza, another undocumented worker who lost her janitorial job at a school when it closed, was able to get into contact with a case worker only to have the call dropped. “There goes my hope of feeling a little less pressure and worry,” she told The Times.
While these organizations have been working to restore phone service in addition to their ongoing advocacy services, this is truly a failure belonging to the federal government. These families should have been among those who automatically received a stimulus check in the mail or direct deposit from the start (although many of those payments also came with their own delays, it must be noted). And as vital as California’s $125 million fund will stand to be, it’ll only cover about 150,000 undocumented workers out of the millions who call the state home.
“Two-thirds of them have lived in the United States for more than a decade,” The Times continued. “Collectively, they have five million American-born children and pay billions of dollars in taxes, yet most states have not moved to provide any assistance through the current economic collapse.”
House Democrats have passed new legislation that now includes many workers previously shut out of relief (including U.S. citizens who aren’t getting a check because they’re married to an immigrant), but the White House has thrown cold water on that plan. With the Trump administration stating clear as day that it truly doesn’t give a crap about families starving or losing their homes because of their immigration status or who they’re married to, states like California are doing what they can in the absence of federal leadership.
“We know that money is limited and doesn’t reflect the amount of taxes that the undocumented pay in California,” Carecen coordinator Olimpia Blanco told The Times. “We believe we owe it to the community to make the process as equitable as possible and uphold the first-come, first-served nature of it.”