Testimony: Low-Wage Immigrant Workers and the COVID-19 Recovery
Emerita Torres
Testimony on New York City Council Budget and Oversight Hearings on The Preliminary Budget for Fiscal Year 2023
Before the NYC Council Committee on Immigration
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on the issue of low-wage immigrant workers in a COVID-19 recovery. My name is Emerita Torres, and I am the Vice President of Policy Research and Advocacy at the Community Service Society of New York (CSS), a nonprofit organization that works to advance upward mobility for low-income New Yorkers. We have supported low-wage workers, including immigrant workers for 175 years. Most recently, working with partners, we advocated for the creation of the $2.3 billion Excluded Workers’ Fund in Albany, worked to expand paid sick leave laws in New York City and statewide, secured reduced transit fares for New Yorkers in poverty and made rent-relief available through the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, or ERAP. Today, my testimony will be focused on the nature and extent of hardship in the low-wage immigrant community and recommendations for policies aimed at reducing the same.
Low-wage immigrant workers and the COVID-19 crisis
Immigrants make up around 43 percent of the city’s four-million strong workforce.[1] While they are employed in a wide range of industries, they comprise a majority of the frontline essential workers who continued to operate in-person throughout the pandemic. Based on 2019 American Community Survey data, the Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Affairs (MOIA) estimates that foreign-born workers comprised 56 percent of the workforce in essential industries and 58 percent of the essential occupations. A direct consequence of being an essential worker and bearing the brunt of keeping the city running through repeated waves of infections and lockdown is that immigrant communities experienced COVID-19 infections and deaths at higher rates.
In 2019, the median immigrant worker earns around $38,2000, in a year, which is estimated to be around $14,000 less than the earnings of their median native-born counterpart. This is not surprising since a majority of the immigrant workforce is engaged either in low-wage industries (e.g., restaurant and food services, home and health care services, child day care services etc.) or engaged in low-wage occupations across industrial sectors. (e.g., taxi and limousine driving, housekeeping and custodial services etc.). Needless to say, these are also some of the jobs that were hit the worst by the pandemic and the ensuing recession. A jointly published factsheet by MOIA and Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) states that- of the total estimated 366,000 undocumented immigrant workers in the city, 233,000, or 60 percent, are economically at risk, i.e., have already lost their jobs or are at a risk of losing it, compared to 36 percent citywide.
Among those surveyed by the Community Service Society’s Unheard Third Survey, the longest running survey and opinion poll of low-income New Yorkers, one-in-four immigrants experienced income losses and had their hours/wages/tips reduced during the pandemic. As business closures mounted and conventional jobs were lost by the thousands, many turned to non-traditional work, or what has come to be known as the "gig economy." The Unheard Third survey shows that the share of the immigrant workforce signing on to app-based gig work increased over the pandemic from 13 percent in 2019 to 19 percent in 2021. Among those with household incomes below 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Line (FPL), the rise was even more dramatic: from 16 percent in 2020 to 27 percent this year. Gig workers and independent contractors are often deliberately misclassified by employers to prevent them from accessing critical rights and workplace benefits (e.g., minimum pay standard, health and safety protections, paid time off).
These workers have largely been excluded from traditional safety net assistance programs like unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), cash assistance, Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Plan (SNAP, formerly Food Stamps), and the Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP). In addition to the undocumented, the federal CARES Act excluded all ITIN filers—another category of legitimate tax filers who pay into the system but are denied access to most benefits and tax credits, even when there are U.S. born children in their households. The Biden administration did undo some of this harm by allowing ITIN filers to receive Child Tax Credit for the children who had Social Security Numbers.
To its credit, the City established the Immigrant Emergency Relief Fund to help workers who were hit the hardest by the pandemic and were ineligible for federal relief/stimulus assistance. When the $2.1 billion Excluded Workers’ Fund was established by state elected officials, it seemed like a landmark victory in support of low-income immigrant workers. The Fund, which was designed to offer up to $15,600 in assistance to undocumented workers who lost work during the pandemic, is now depleted, and thousands, who qualify for the income support, are missing out on the payments.
Recommendations
It is at this juncture, that we urge the Council to enact on our following recommendations:
- Secure workers’ rights and benefits for all low-income workers, including app-based gig workers and ensure that all workers have access to paid sick leave, overtime pay, and unemployment insurance. We urge the Council to pass Intro 1926 which would expand the definition of an employee under the city’s paid sick leave law to cover gig workers and other workers misclassified as independent contractors who have been excluded from this important workplace standard.[2]
- Develop and publicly host a portable benefits model so the benefits would be tied to a worker rather than being tied to their job. This would allow workers to own and access their benefits regardless of the nature of their employment. The concept of portability is especially important for many low-wage workers who may have multiple jobs or change jobs more frequently, and such a system would allow workers to keep their benefits when they transition between employers or go through periods of unemployment/underemployment. Portability of benefits is not a new idea—Social Security is an example of a program providing portable benefits. Mayor Eric Adams, when he was Brooklyn Borough President, had penned a powerful op-ed in the Daily News imploring the use of a portable benefits system modeled after the Black Car Fund, to cover freelancers and independent workers.
- Improve awareness and enforcement of existing rights and protections: Seven years after the city’s paid sick days law took effect, data from our 2021 Unheard Third survey shows that 42 percent of low-income workers covered under the law say that they still don’t receive paid sick time from their employer, more than double the share of those with moderate to higher incomes. The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP), to its credit, has ramped up its public education and enforcement efforts in recent years, especially during the pandemic, but lack of awareness persists nonetheless. For this reason, we urge the City Council to pass Intro 0078, a bill that would require DCWP to produce posters for voluntary ongoing display at pharmacies and health care locations around the city informing New Yorkers of their right to paid sick leave.
- Pass a resolution imploring the state to expand EITC to ITIN filers: Six states—Maryland, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington State—have extended their credit to filers who lack SSNs but pay taxes using an ITINs. Repeated attempts to expand EITC recipiency to ITIN filers in New York State have failed even though the expansion would have benefitted U.S. born children in mixed status households (where at least one householder is an immigrant). While the benefits of expanding the EITC are numerous- positive impact on work, reduction in poverty, improvement in well-being of children both in short as well as in long term, creation of new jobs, and increase in tax revenue- the most important reason to do so would be equity. These filers contribute to the economic system exactly the same at those holding SSNs and denying them access to the EITC is more a matter of anti-immigrant stance, than one of tax policy. We urge the Council to pass a resolution favoring this expansion.
- ENL and ELL students from academic services and educational opportunities: The pandemic has taught us that our education system is ill-prepared for transitioning its students from in-class instruction to at-home instruction, but this is especially so for those who are learning English or do not speak English at all. Student and parent comments at Citywide Education Councils as well as testimonies at the recent hearing on English Language Learners have made clear that the New York City Department of Education was not able to deliver accurate and timely information about at-home instruction, device availability, and internet service provisions, in the languages that families needed. A bias towards English in a city as diverse as New York only works to deepen and broaden extant inequities in our education system. We strongly believe action should be taken now to increase language supports for our families. This is particularly important as the expansion of SYEP rolls out this summer. In order to ensure equitable access to SYEP, we ask that the Council work with the NYCDOE to ensure that ENL and ELL students are not excluded due to lack of timely, language-appropriate information.
- Expand CityFHEPS rental assistance to immigrants: Rental assistance can act as a key mechanism to both keep renters facing eviction housed and to help homeless New Yorkers find homes. CityFHEPS is the rental assistance program that the city has the most direct control over. Unfortunately, there are a number of administrative and enforcement obstacles for using CityFHEPS for eviction prevention. Most crucially, New Yorkers must stay in a shelter for ninety days before becoming eligible and are faced with systemic source of income discrimination from landlords. Further, undocumented New Yorkers are not eligible for CityFHEPS. The city should work to expand eligibility to CityFHEPS to include undocumented New Yorkers and address housing insecurity.
- Pass Local law 53 to ensure tenants are aware of their Right to Counsel: New York was the first city in the country to implement a Right to Counsel (RTC) law. Between 2017 and 2019, evictions in zip codes where RTC was implemented declined by 29 percent, compared to a 16 percent decline in zip codes with similar eviction, poverty, and rental rates. Following the implementation of RTC, we worked closely with the Right to Counsel Coalition to advocate for Local Law 53, which requires the City to work with tenant organizers to educate tenants about RTC. It was supposed to go into effect in November 2021, but Local Law 53 was not implemented. The city is now out of compliance and the law needs to be implemented immediately. Right to Counsel is extremely effective at keeping people housed, but it does not work if tenants do not know to take advantage of it. Trusted, neighborhood-based groups, especially those that prioritize outreach in immigrant communities, are the key to getting information to tenants facing eviction.
- Fund Community Land Trusts: We support the call for $3 million in City Council discretionary funding to develop community land trusts and permanently affordable housing, commercial and community space. Launched in FY2020, the citywide CLT Initiative has catalyzed CLT organizing in the South and Northwest Bronx, East Harlem, Richmond Hill, Brownsville, East New York and beyond. CLTs are community-controlled nonprofits that own land and ensure that it is used to provide permanently affordable housing and other community needs. Today, CLTs across the city are organizing in Black, Latinx, Asian, and immigrant neighborhoods to stabilize housing, combat speculation, and ensure a just recovery from the pandemic.
Immigrants are the backbone of our city and they deserve the services and support that all New Yorkers receive. And with the legislation recently passed by the City Council allowing 800,000 immigrants to vote in our municipal elections, they are now a powerful constituency that our government must listen to and serve. CSS stands ready to support our immigrant community and we are happy to take your questions.
Thank you and please reach out at etorres@cssny.org with any questions you might have.
Notes
1. CSS analysis of 2019-American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample.
2. At the state level, Senator Robert Jackson and Assemblymember Deborah Glick introduced legislation (S6699A/A08721A) in 2019 that would reclassify more gig workers as employees using the ABC test. The bill has been re-introduced in 2021-2022 legislative session (S1999/A5772).