California’s most vulnerable immigrants faced unprecedented challenges this year, with some assessing whether it is worth staying in the United States.
Ten months of a pandemic that disproportionately made immigrants sick and devastated some of the industries that depend on immigrant labor, combined with years of anti-immigrant policies from the Trump administration, have exacerbated insecurity for undocumented people and immigrants working in jobs. low wages across California.
For immigrants at the bottom of the economic ladder, it has never been easy in the United States, said Luz Gallegos, executive director of the immigrant advocacy group Legal Training Center for Occupational Development and Educational Communities (Todec).
“But California has also always been a place where my family – my parents and grandparents – believed they could build a better life,” said Gallegos, who was born into a family of immigrant activists and organizers. “It has always been a place with potential.”
Until this year.
“There has been a lot of fear and trauma – just layers of trauma,” she said.
Mega farm workers and huge warehouses across the California Interior Empire and the central valley – many of whom continued to work on the most severe stretches of the pandemic, despite coronavirus outbreaks in many facilities – have come to Gallegos for advice on to do when they get sick.
A family she spoke with recently asked if there was a community clinic that they could go to Covid’s treatment instead of the county hospital. As green card applicants, they feared that if they sought government medical assistance, they could be denied permanent residence due to the Trump administration’s so-called “public charge” rule, which allowed the government to deny residence to immigrants who depend on public benefits. . Gallegos said he tried to explain that going to a county hospital would not disqualify them – and, in addition, a federal court recently blocked implementation of the rule. “I told them, you should think about your health first. You will have no use for a green card if you are not alive, ”said Gallegos.
But they could not endure the uncertainty. Then the grandmother, the mother and two young children moved across the southern border. The children, both American citizens, still manage to cross the border to attend school.
“It is not even that the country is no longer welcoming, it is simply not an option anymore,” said Gallegos. “I hear it all the time from people here and from friends and family in other countries.”
Javier Lua Figureo returned to his hometown in Michoacán, Mexico, three years ago, after living and working in California for a dozen years. Since the pandemic struck, several of his friends and family have followed suit, he said.
“Things are not perfect in Mexico,” said Figureo in Spanish. But at least there is access to health and some unemployment benefits for those in need, he added. “Compared to what it was in the US, the situation for us in Mexico is now much better.”
Although California’s coronavirus case tracking data does not track immigration status, studies and research have found that the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on the state’s immigrant population. Or, as UC Berkeley researchers put it, “Even if the virus doesn’t see people’s citizenship or visa status, immigrants can be especially vulnerable to infections, serious illnesses, financial difficulties and hateful discrimination.”
Immigrants are more likely to work on the frontline of the pandemic, such as health workers, grocery store clerks, delivery drivers and farmers, where their chances of contracting the virus are especially high. A third of all doctors are immigrants and therefore at least half of the country’s rural workers. It is estimated that 75% of rural workers in California are undocumented immigrants.
Even before the Trump administration implemented its anti-immigrant policies, and even before the pandemic hit, non-citizens had less access to health and health insurance, as well as safety net programs like food stamps and unemployment. In May and June, they did not receive the $ 2,000 stimulus check that most Americans with a social security number received.
A $ 125 million fund to send a $ 500 one-time cash grant offered to workers without legal status dried up quickly and was a drop in the ocean. State Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would give low-income immigrants $ 600 in groceries.
“It looks like discrimination,” said Pedro, who is 41 and works on a cauliflower farm in Riverside County, east of Los Angeles. In March, he lost his job and was unable to pay the rent. And as California faces an increase in coronavirus cases, he said he still doesn’t know what he would do if he or his wife hired Covid-19 – they don’t have health insurance and, without legal documents, they don’t feel safe going to the locations. free trials administered by the county.
Meanwhile, he is nervous to see border patrol agents around the city. “I’m scared to even go out and buy things for my daughters,” he said in Purépecha. The Guardian is not using Pedro’s surname to protect him and his undocumented family members.
There is no extensive data on how many immigrants have decided to return to their countries of origin.
A recent analysis of US census data by UC Merced researchers estimates that the total population of immigrants – including naturalized citizens, documented and undocumented immigrants – in the US fell 2.6% in 2020, the biggest percentage decline in two decades. . In California, the immigrant population has dropped more than 6%, the report estimates, from about 10.3 million in 2020 to 9.7 million this year. The report was based on the monthly population survey of the Census Bureau of 60,000 American families. The researchers said they are waiting to see if trends will continue in a larger Census survey with millions of people, which has not yet been completed.
Pandemic-era travel restrictions and barriers to legal immigration, deportations, as well as dire economic conditions and the lack of access to safety net programs for unemployed migrants may explain these figures, demographers told the Guardian.
“The only precedent for this type of decline in the immigrant population was the Great Recession,” said Edward Flores, a sociology professor at UC Merced who conducted the analysis. At the height of the recession in 2009, the immigrant population fell 1.6%, before recovering again.
It is difficult to find out whether the undocumented immigrant population in the US and California is specifically declining, said Julia Gelatt, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington DC. People without legal status are less likely to respond to surveys, especially those they believe are associated with the government.
Throughout the history of the United States, there have been “periods of inclusion and periods of exclusion,” said Rubén G Rumbaut, a sociologist at the University of California, Irvine. The national crisis and the economic recession have sometimes provoked xenophobia and hostility towards immigrants. “When there is a perceived threat, it becomes easier for leaders to manipulate the masses to scapegoat foreigners,” he said.
“But California’s economy, even more so now, is heavily dependent on immigrant labor,” added Rumbaut. “And once the pandemic is controlled, the work of immigrants will be essential for economic recovery.” Joe Biden’s new government – like California lawmakers, he said, will do well to recognize that.
For Pedro, Biden’s electoral victory brought a sense of relief. For now, “I’m not thinking of going back to Mexico,” he said. His sister – who left when she couldn’t find work in Southern California – now regrets, he said. Jobs are even scarcer at the border. There is still a good reason why so many immigrants have come or want to come to California, he said: they come to work.
“I am here to support my family,” he said. And he hopes that next year, that will be at least a little easier to do.