MIAMI — As of Monday, Carolina Guity and her husband will be jobless with two young children at home to feed.
Guity, an undocumented domestic worker from Honduras, was one of tens of thousands of people in Florida who suddenly found herself unemployed amid the coronavirus crisis.
Her husband, a worker for an air-conditioning repair company, is next.
“They already slashed his hours by half and told him that Monday there likely will be no work,” Guilty said from her Northwest Miami-Dade home. “You tell me how we’re going to survive this.”
While people across the country receive $1,200 coronavirus relief checks from the federal government later this month, millions of immigrant households nationwide will not receive a penny from the government’s $2 trillion economic rescue plan. Undocumented people are also excluded in Florida’s unemployment benefits, which pay jobless adults up to $275 a week for 12 weeks. The federal government will augment that temporarily as part of its response to the coronavirus crisis.
The lack of access to state and federal emergency funding has forced hundreds of South Florida immigrant families to turn to small local organizations instead for money and even food.
This week, Guity was one of about 100 domestic workers in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties — and one of about 1,000 nationwide — who received a $400 prepaid gift card to help soften the financial blow.
“We know it’s not enough to get families by, but it’s a bit of help,” said Joanna Arellano, a spokeswoman for the National Domestic Workers Alliance. She noted that The Coronavirus Care Fund was established by the organization “to provide emergency assistance for home care workers, nannies and house cleaners to support them in staying safe and staying home to slow the spread of the coronavirus and to care for themselves and their families.”
But Guity knows the small lump sum is not enough for the family of four: “It’s a small blessing to cover some costs like water, electricity, our phone bills and food.”
She says her biggest worries now are the choices she will have to make next week.
“Up until now, I’ve been able to put my children’s health first by staying home with them and not exposing them to the virus,” she said. “But come Monday, I worry how we will put food on the table.”
Alexander Paniagua of Homestead is also in a dire situation after losing his construction job three weeks ago. With no immigration documents and a wife and three children to feed, he says he feels “desperate” in the face of the epidemic.
“We don’t have jobs. We will not receive aid from Congress. We also can’t go take the coronavirus tests. We are the ones who hold up this country, but the rope always breaks at its weakest point,” he said. “On the fifth, I have to pay the rent but don’t have the money to do it.”
Paniagua told the Herald he has also turned to local organizations for help. This week it was a nearby Catholic church for canned food, bread and water.
Paniagua’s wife, Ana Song, says she worries about the family’s health as well as food and rent.
“What happens if we actually get the coronavirus? I am worried that they will not allow us to go to the hospitals,” she said.
As coronavirus continues to make its way through the U.S., immigration activists have worried that undocumented immigrants may fail to get treatment if they have symptoms, fearing they will be detained by immigration authorities.
Historically, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol have said that they won’t engage in immigration enforcement procedures — arrests, searches or interviews — at hospitals, schools or places of worship, designated as “sensitive zones,” unless there are “exigent circumstances.”
Though neither the White House nor the Department of Homeland Security has commented on whether the administration will officially declare healthcare facilities enforcement-free zones amid the outbreak, ICE told the Miami Herald last month that undocumented immigrants should not fear getting medical help for the coronavirus.
“Coronavirus is not considered an exigent circumstance, and individuals seeking medical treatment for the virus should continue to do so without fear or hesitation,” ICE said in an email. “Claims to the contrary are false and create unnecessary fear within communities.”
Lis-Marie Alvarado, the program director of American Friends Service Committee, a nonprofit immigrant organization in Miami, confirmed to the Herald that immigrant families in South Florida are thinking twice before going to seek medical services.
“The threat of ICE raids in hospitals is real, but we are urging the community to take measures to prevent the coronavirus and to go seek medical attention at our community clinics and public hospitals if they have any symptoms,” Alvarado said.
Florida state Sen. José Javier Rodríguez says his office is doing all it can to help undocumented families, including getting sick families easy access to COVID-19 tests at their local clinics.
“There are many things we have been able to do for the undocumented community, but we cannot disclose what we are doing in a newspaper because I fear that the state and federal resources used to help would suddenly disappear,” he said.
Rodríguez said he would not elaborate on the resources his office is offering jobless, immigrant families, but urged the undocumented, their friends or neighbors, or anyone that wants to help these people, to call his office.
“The coronavirus does not discriminate,” he said. “The idea that we are going to leave some people out of the reach of our response is harmful to everyone.”
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