SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom late Wednesday vetoed a bill that would have made undocumented immigrants eligible for California unemployment benefits.
The bill, known as the Excluded Workers Pilot Program, would have provided up to $300 a week for 20 weeks to unemployed individuals. To qualify, applicants would have had to demonstrate they were California residents, unemployed for at least one week and ineligible for state unemployment insurance.
Currently, unemployment insurance is distributed by the state’s Employment Development Department and is only available to residents who are legally allowed to work in the U.S. The pilot program would have been administered separately from the agency.
Newsom cited the bill’s potential cost in a veto message. He wrote the bill would have required the state to spend some $200 million to launch the program, and then about $20 million a year to sustain it.
He noted his administration has taken other steps recently to expand the social safety net for undocumented residents, including expanding access to health care, food assistance and other benefits.
Roughly 140,000 undocumented residents would have been eligible for the program, according to March 2022 analysis from the UC Merced Community and Labor Center. That same study found undocumented workers filling one in 16 jobs in the state, while also generating $3.7 billion in state and local tax revenues.
“Our immigrant communities are Californians who contribute millions to our unemployment program and economy. These excluded workers deserve and have earned access to unemployment relief,” Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella, said in a statement on the bill before Newsom vetoed it.
Daniela Alvarenga, the economic justice policy coordinator at the California Immigrant Policy Center, said unemployment assistance is especially important given that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated disparities among undocumented residents. In May 2020, California became the first state to give pandemic relief directly to undocumented households.
The bill “is a critical step in building true economic resiliency in California,” Alvarenga said before Newsom vetoed the measure. “Leaving Californians without access to economic recourse during a crisis will only lead to more housing insecurity, greater accumulation of debt, and more precarity in the labor market.”
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