California built a safety net for undocumented immigrants. Now deficits could leave some behind
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Driving a tractor for his job in the Oxnard lettuce fields doesn’t make Arturo Villanueva rich, but it’s usually been enough to make rent and support his family.
Farm labor is the only thing the 37-year-old father of five says he knows how to do well. When months of rain flooded the fields and made most of his usual work in February and March impossible, he struggled to earn enough to cover rent and allow his family “to live well.”
His family cut back on the amount and type of food they purchased. They rarely left the house, to save money on gas. They tried to buy only what they absolutely needed.
Months later, Villanueva still isn’t working his usual hours because rainy weather delayed planting some crops by at least two months. California set aside $95 million in state funds to help people like him who lost work or experienced hardships due to storms and floods, but Villanueva told CalMatters in June he didn’t know how to access it.
“So many of us who work in the fields are undocumented,” he said in Spanish. “We who are the most affected receive the least. I would like there to be support for the undocumented workers — and not just those working in the fields.”
Villanueva can’t receive unemployment insurance because he’s undocumented — one of about 2.3 million Californians whose immigration status bars them from receiving a variety of social safety net benefits.
His predicament illustrates the gaps that remain in California’s safety net for undocumented immigrants despite a two-decade-long expansion of social and health services.
In a major reversal since the 1990s, California has opened up government programs to undocumented residents more than any other state — issuing driver’s licenses, college scholarships, low-income tax credits, direct cash aid during the pandemic and now Medi-Cal health coverage. In 2025 California will be the first state to issue food stamps to undocumented immigrants, allowing those 55 and older to qualify.
But budget realities are putting the brakes on other expansions that advocates want like a $330 million proposal to offer unemployment benefits to undocumented workers.
Lucas Zucker, co-executive director of the Central Coast nonprofit CAUSE, which advocates for working class and immigrant workers, said it can be a difficult hurdle to extend benefits because some Americans view immigrants primarily as a source of labor.
“Providing someone a social safety net when they’re not able to work is almost counterintuitive to this racist and kind of exploitative way that we’ve been viewing immigrants in this country,” Zucker said.
California has worked around limits in federal law that bar many immigrants – those with and without legal status – from social programs. That has meant building its own, state-funded programs during years of flush budget surpluses.
But this year, lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom had to plug a $31.5 billion deficit.
Newsom has backed several program expansions including public health coverage for immigrants, which will total $2.6 billion annually. But he has said he wants to avoid cutting services in deficit years, so he won’t commit to further expanding programs unless the state has funds to sustain them long-term.
The proposal for an unemployment program for workers like Villanueva failed to gain funding in the state budget for the second year in a row. A bill to create the program at a cost of $330 million a year – not counting implementation costs – has passed the Senate and awaits a hearing in the Assembly Appropriations Committee. Newsom vetoed a similar measure last year.
“The Governor will weigh the merits of any bill that eventually reaches his desk,” Daniel Lopez, a spokesperson for Newsom, said in an email. “The state will continue to be a leader and uphold the dignity and respect of everyone who calls California home.”
Critics argue further expanding services to undocumented immigrants is financially unsustainable for the state.
Assemblymember Bill Essayli, a Riverside Republican, opposes the unemployment proposal, saying the state should instead spend its funds paying off the existing unemployment system’s $20 billion loan from the federal government, to avoid raising payroll taxes on businesses.
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