Red Bank Talks COVID-19 Impacts on Noncitizen Communities

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By Allison Perrine

RED BANK – More than 30 individuals tuned into the Red Bank Public Library’s most recent Let’s Talk About Race forum July 29 to learn about how the pandemic is impacting noncitizens across the country.

During the virtual forum, two panelists, Itzel Hernandez and Adriana Medina Gomez, shared the ways people of color and noncitizens are at disadvantages in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and the rippling effects that causes on financial status, job security and more. Both women represented the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization that works toward peace and social justice in the U.S. and globally.

“One of the things that we’ve talked about in this program for almost five years is the humanity of all of us,” said Linda Hewitt, library circulation supervisor and adult program and outreach coordinator. “When you look at blueberry season or you look at peach season, you know that people are picking this fruit for everyone to eat, many of whom…have no health care,” she said. “They don’t have any recourse if they get sick and they have to go to work no matter what.”

According to Hernandez, there are about 22.6 million people considered noncitizens under U.S. law, those with immigration statuses including permanent residents and temporary and unauthorized immigrants. About 80 percent of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. have been there for over 15 years, she said, yet they are still impacted by COVID-19 at significantly higher rates than U.S. born citizens.

“Just based on the stats if you are a noncitizen immigrant, you are less likely – even if you are legally allowed to work here – to have a job in which health care is an option,” she said. “So, when we talk about COVID, we can think about the fact that they were already off to a disadvantage. They were less likely to be in a job that gave them coverage and they were less likely to have access to either public or private health care.”

Before the pandemic struck, there were about 7.7 million noncitizens considered to be underinsured, uninsured or have no access to insurance, she said. And when the unemployment percentage hit about 25 percent in the past few months, that number reached 10.8 million people. Noncitizens, in general, are more likely to be part of the food, hospitality and health care industries, which were some of the first industries impacted by the shutdowns.

Additionally, Hernandez said, there is an information gap created by the challenges faced by non-English speakers. When the CDC started releasing guidelines for the pandemic, its website did not initially offer the information in languages other than English, she said. And from what she understands, “it might have not been done by mistake.”

She cited “massive” delays and funding cuts as the reason translations of government websites were not available for secondary English language speakers or non-English speakers. That prevented some from understanding where to get testing and treatment, leaving these communities more likely to become infected or potentially die from the virus.

Gomez cited the American Immigration Council in explaining that 8 million undocumented individuals are part of the U.S. workforce. In 2018 in New Jersey alone, one in every four workers were immigrants and 1.4 million immigrant workers comprised 29 percent of the state labor force. Now, because a large part of the immigrant community works in job sectors that run elevated risks of contracting the virus, families are feeling economic burdens in several different ways. And that’s not going away soon, she said.

“It has caused a ripple effect in the economy of many families, and it’s leading immigrant families into major debt,” said Gomez. “Medical bills are piling up and some have multiple rents due. And on top of all that, there’s also families left with expenses of funerals for those family members who were taken by COVID.”

She also explained that before the pandemic started, there was “already a huge backlog” of cases in immigration court across the country. At the time, the average court case took about two to five years to reach a final hearing depending on the type of case and complexity. The pandemic has only added to that backlog.

As of April 24, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had suspended its in-person services including asylum interviews, citizenship oath ceremonies and adjustment of status interviews. Some cases are slowly making their way through the system again, she said, but they do not know when the schedule will go back to normal. For some, that normalcy will not come soon enough.

According to Gomez, asylum applications have strict one-year filing deadlines from the time the person enters the U.S. If they do not file within that period, citizenship is “almost unattainable,” she said. Those who did not file or were close to their deadlines when the courts shut down will almost certainly be impacted. Part of the problem also relates back to the information gap, saying that many individuals need help understanding how and where to file the applications, and how much time they have to do so.

“Although it is briefly explained when they enter…they explain it to them in a moment where they might not be OK mentally to understand all of that information,” she said. “Therefore, you do have a lot of applicants that feel lost and they didn’t hear correctly and so they think it’s after the one year that they’re supposed to file.”

Some legislation has been passed by elected officials on the federal, state and local levels with the potential to cover a large number of people, including immigrant communities. The CARES Act did this for the most part, Hernandez said. However, stimulus checks “strategically” left out immigrants and it barred noncitizen immigrants from getting financial assistance when it came to COVID-19 treatment.

“On average, the treatment for COVID if it’s not something serious, it’s about $3,000. If it’s something where you require hospitalization and stay, it was up to $20,000,” she said. That has the potential to particularly harm noncitizen workers who became infected, lost their jobs and had no protections or safety nets, fearing that going somewhere for treatment could weigh against their immigration status, said Hernandez. It has increased the mortality rate “significantly” in the immigrant community.

The forum concluded with an informal Q&A session. The forum is to be posted to the Red Bank Public Library website at redbanklibrary.org, and on the library’s Facebook page in the coming weeks.

The article originally appeared in the August 6 – 12, 2020 print edition of The Two River Times.