The fund aimed at supporting undocumented immigrants living in New York will no longer accept new applications and will have exhausted its pot of more than $ 2 billion by the end of the month, announced the office of Governor Kathy Hochul.
Since last Friday, no new applications have been accepted for the Excluded Workers Fund, which provides assistance to people who do not meet the criteria for unemployment compensation and other state and federal incentives due to their immigration status.
The fund has already disbursed $ 1.2 billion in benefits to nearly 120,000 people who applied for the assistance since the state Department of Labor launched the program this summer.
ARE THERE FUNDS FOR PENDING APPLICATIONS?
Yes. The rest of the funds will be allocated to cases that are in processing. By the end of October, the fund will have paid out more than $ 2 billion, according to Hochul.
“We must ensure that immigrant communities are supported in our recovery, and from my first day in office I have been committed to reaching out to New Yorkers in need as quickly as possible,” Hochul said in a news release Friday.
Hochul had promised to speed up application approvals and payment processing in his first week in office. The state DOL also worked with 75 community groups across the state on outreach about the program and education on the Excluded Workers Fund application.
Almost all approved applicants received the maximum funding amount of $ 15,600, the state said.
To qualify for the fund, applicants had to show that they were New York residents prior to March 2020 and did not qualify for unemployment or other assistance; have income of less than $ 26,208 in the year prior to April 2021; and have lost at least half of their weekly earnings between February 23, 2020 and April 1, 2021 due to the pandemic.
Advocates said the rapid depletion of the Excluded Workers Fund demonstrates the breadth of the need across the state. The Fiscal Policy Institute has estimated that 290,000 workers across the state could benefit from these funds, including 213,000 people in New York City alone.
State lawmakers who sponsored the Excluded Workers Fund, including State Sen. Jessica Ramos, are asking Hochul for additional funding and expanding unemployment benefits.
“With 99% of approved applications qualifying for Level 1 benefits, it is clear that unemployment insurance unfairly excludes hundreds of thousands of taxpayers, and too many workers, particularly in the upstate, were unable to participate,” Queens State Sen. Jessica Ramos said in a press release.
“We need supplemental funds to continue serving working families on their path to economic recovery.”
“The Excluded Workers Fund was born out of the pain and suffering we witnessed in our communities at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Assemblywoman Carmen De La Rosa said in a statement.
“We have seen how urgent the need for financial relief is,” he added.
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