Tips, as much as 70% of pay for such workers, are part of the pay calculation for unemployment but they fell off drastically at the start of the pandemic and some workers didn’t report cash tips to avoid taxes.
Hard-pressed Houston has seen an influx of asylum seekers from Central America attracted by the area’s booming pre-pandemic economy, though many have had a hard time finding work.
“For the undocumented immigrants, the pandemic was a disaster on top of a disaster,” said Francisco Arguelles, executive director of the Living Hope Wheelchair Association, a Houston-based charity that helps immigrants with disabilities who don’t have health insurance.
Already struggling with food and rent costs before the pandemic, many immigrants have turned to local charities like food banks, moved in with friends and family in increasingly crowded conditions, and gathered in fast-food parking lots for Wi-Fi for their children’s schooling, Arguelles said.
Ana, a 31-year-old single mother and immigrant from Mexico living in the U.S. illegally, found it particularly hard to find work in the Houston area while caring for her five children, all U.S.-born citizens, in a home owned by her father. Local charities helped her get through until she found a way to support the family by baking cakes and other desserts at home.
“They did so much for me. They helped me with food and clothes and little things like birthday presents for my children—that was so important,” she said.
Houston-area food banks are employing some out-of-work restaurant employees to help with food distribution, regardless of immigration status, through a relief initiative called Get Shift Done.
Food banks in the area distribute about 800,000 pounds of food a day, twice the amount they did last year, said Paula Murphy, a spokesperson for the Houston Food Bank, which covers 18 counties in Southeast Texas.
But Texas food banks are fighting a state funding cutback triggered by across-the-board state budget cuts because of falling tax revenue. The $1.9 million cut came from money used to send surplus farm produce to food banks, and Feeding Texas, an umbrella organization for 21 food banks, has opposed the reduction.
The Texas Department of Agriculture has asked for more money for food banks, possibly from federal funds, when the legislature convenes next week, said department spokesperson Mark Loeffler.
Even immigrants with legal permission to work have trouble getting by, especially with new “public charge” rules that discourage immigrants who hope for a green card from using public benefits.
Adesola Ogunleye, 33, who has legal work permission since she was brought to the U.S as a child from Nigeria and has DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) status, got a dream job in January, helping to manage a Philadelphia restaurant for $18 an hour. But the restaurant closed in March, and when it reopened, Ogunleye decided it was too risky to go back since she has diabetes and COVID-19 would especially dangerous for her.
She qualified for unemployment at $175 a week, but “that’s not enough to pay any bills,” she said. Friends have helped her, she said, directly and through online fundraisers, and a consortium of restaurants sometimes makes meals for her and other out-of-work restaurant employees.
She felt she couldn’t ask for food stamps or help paying her utility bills because she was told those would endanger her prospects for getting a green card and eventual citizenship. That’s a valid concern for immigrants hoping for a green card, also known as legal permanent resident status, which is a step on the way to citizenship, said Randy Capps, director of research at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
Utility help is not considered under the public charge rule, Capps said, but many immigrants turn down benefits they’re entitled to out of worry about the rules. The rule had a chilling effect on immigrant use of such benefits, according to a December study co-authored by Capps.
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