Expanding Inclusion in the Social Safety Net: Impacts of New York’s Excluded Workers Fund
Response to the COVID-19 pandemic and recession spurred a wave of policy innovation around the country. The pandemic revealed weak spots in our social safety net, and governments scrambled to fix them—at least temporarily. Although federal efforts typically tried to carve out undocumented immigrants (Smith et al. 2020), many states and localities around the country made a particular effort to include immigrants and others who were excluded.1The federal economic impact payments or “stimulus checks,” for example, excluded undocumented immigrants, and in the initial round, also their spouses and children (see Guelespe et al. 2022). At the state and local level, there were various efforts to extend assistance, including a number of cash funds supported by philanthropy (see “The Emma Lazarus Campaign, Executive Summary,” International Migration Initiative and Open Society Foundation, March 2021, https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/uploads/5c240f26-bde9-4c7f-a115-0a86d34506a7/emma-lazarus-campaign-executive-summary-20210308.pdf), California’s $75 million cash assistance fund for undocumented immigrants, and moves to expand Medicaid eligibility such as Illinois’s expansion to low-income seniors regardless of immigration status. New York’s Excluded Worker Fund (EWF) was by far the largest of these efforts. The New York fund was a $2.1 billion program that allowed 130,000 immigrants without work authorization, as well as some others who fell between the gaps of federal aid, to get unemployment compensation if they lost work during the pandemic recession. The amount of aid to the vast majority of workers, $15,600, was nearly as much as the annual amount other New Yorkers who lost work were getting in unemployment insurance.2For an overview of similar funds around the country, see Dyssegaard Kallick and colleagues (2022a).
To better understand the successes and shortcomings of the program, the Urban Institute and Immigration Research Initiative conducted a survey of individuals in the population targeted for aid by this fund. Findings from this survey are intended to help inform advocacy efforts and future legislation, as New York advocates urge inclusion in the 2023 budget and states and localities across the nation consider implementation of permanent unemployment benefit programs for excluded workers.
We sought to survey individuals who would have been eligible for the EWF, regardless of whether they applied for or received the funds. To qualify for the EWF, applicants had to meet residency and financial requirements, and they could not have received regular or expanded unemployment insurance. We partnered with 10 community-based organizations (CBOs) to reach out to constituents that could have qualified for the fund.
A total of 408 workers responded to the survey in seven languages including English, Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Korean, and Spanish, with geographic representation from immigrants in Long Island, New York City, the northern suburbs of New York City, and Upstate New York. Working alongside CBOs helped to inform the research design and to build trust among community members that they were being given a confidential and meaningful opportunity to inform future government policy.
These survey results provide insights from a population for which survey data are hard to find and contributes to an appraisal of the success of a groundbreaking program seeking to bridge a gap in a crucial part of the social safety net.
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- 1The federal economic impact payments or “stimulus checks,” for example, excluded undocumented immigrants, and in the initial round, also their spouses and children (see Guelespe et al. 2022). At the state and local level, there were various efforts to extend assistance, including a number of cash funds supported by philanthropy (see “The Emma Lazarus Campaign, Executive Summary,” International Migration Initiative and Open Society Foundation, March 2021, https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/uploads/5c240f26-bde9-4c7f-a115-0a86d34506a7/emma-lazarus-campaign-executive-summary-20210308.pdf), California’s $75 million cash assistance fund for undocumented immigrants, and moves to expand Medicaid eligibility such as Illinois’s expansion to low-income seniors regardless of immigration status.
- 2For an overview of similar funds around the country, see Dyssegaard Kallick and colleagues (2022a).