Texas undocumented desperate for work amid coronavirus, ‘even if it means getting sick’
With the last $50 in his pocket, Victor walked around downtown Fort Worth earlier this week looking for work, but most businesses were closed or not taking applications, he said.
Victor, 48, had worked at two restaurants for more than a decade.
In the morning he would make sandwiches at a shop near the University of North Texas Health Science Center, and in the afternoon, he’d prep lunch and dinner plates at an upscale Mexican restaurant downtown.
But Victor lost both jobs when the county closed all non-essential businesses more than five weeks ago in response to the novel coronavirus.
“I’ve never been unemployed,” said Victor, who came to the United States from Guerrero, Mexico, in 1992, and asked that his last name not be used for fear of persecution because he is in the country illegally.
“I’ve never missed a day of work or a payment but that is over. My wife and I don’t know what we are going to do,” he said. “My main concern is finding work even if it means getting sick.”
Six million immigrants work in the industries hardest hit by the pandemic, according to The Migration Policy Institute, an independent, non-partisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. They include restaurants, hotels, office cleaning services, and in-home child care.
Immigrants, documented and undocumented, are on the front lines of the pandemic. They represent 29% of all physicians and 38% of home health aides. They are also a significant share of the people cleaning hospital rooms, staffing grocery stores, and producing food, the report found.
But because people in the country illegally and other immigrants don’t have access to government aid or work benefits, sick days or paid time off, grass-roots organizations have stepped in to help families get through the crisis.
In March, Jessica Ramirez, a leader at United Fort Worth Community Justice Center, a grass-roots immigrant advocacy group, began leading an effort to raise money for the uninsured, undocumented and unemployed.
The group set up a GoFundMe page, Emergency Funding for our Undocumented Community, where they’ve raised about $7,800. So far they’ve helped more than a dozen families pay rent, bills and buy food.
Ramirez is a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, recipient. Her husband works as a manager at a kitchen, and they survive paycheck to paycheck, struggling to raise their five children. They don’t have insurance and she worries every day about what her and her husband would do if either of them contracted the coronavirus.
“What if this gets worse and we lose our jobs?” Ramirez said. “We can’t afford that and it’s something that’s always in the back of our minds.”
There are about 191,000 foreign born, non-citizens like Ramirez and her husband in Tarrant County, according to the latest Census data. Most of them, 51%, are also uninsured.
But Ramirez says her and her family are some of the lucky ones.
DACA, Green-card holders, those on a temporary work visa, and individuals with Temporary Protected Status can access unemployment insurance.
“We have jobs, our health and a roof over our heads,” Ramirez said. “There’s people out here with much less and nowhere to turn.”
Victor and his wife turned to the fund set up by Ramirez.
“I have never asked for financial help like that,” Victor said in Spanish. “It was hard because I thought, ‘What if it’s a scam or what it it’s (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)?’”
After filling out an online survey, Victor was given $200 in cash, which Ramirez’s team delivered to his home in Fort Worth. The only requirement: That the applicant is undocumented and lives in Tarrant County.
Victor said he bought enough beans and rice to last them a couple of months and used the money to pay for his gas and electric bill.
“We were desperate, it hasn’t been easy, but we thank God for the group and we’ll find a way to pay them back.”
More than 22 million people have filed for unemployment since the coronavirus crisis forced most businesses to close, and 175 million Americans are eligible for aid payments.
But many immigrants don’t have access to this federal relief even if they are in the country legally. The pandemic aid package excludes millions of mixed status households where a family member uses an IRS Individual Tax Identification Number.
In many of these households the immigrant using the number is married to a U.S. citizen, has U.S. citizen children and is in the process of becoming naturalized.
In Dallas County, the Workers Defense Project is also collecting donations for undocumented workers, to learn more visit, workersdefense.org.
This story was originally published April 30, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
