Commentary: Make sure O.C.'s poor and immigrant communities can properly access unemployment insurance

By Virginia Parks

May 15, 2020 12:49 PM PT

At the onset of the Great Depression, the state of Wisconsin boldly acted by creating the nation’s first unemployment insurance program.

As the Depression deepened, other states followed Wisconsin’s lead, recognizing the value of quick cash for jobless residents who spent on food, rent and other immediate needs.

What was good for the unemployed was good for local economies. In 1935, national support for unemployment insurance became a cornerstone of the New Deal. The idea was that workers needed protection against cataclysms in the economy that left them without a job through no fault of their own — insurance against unexpected loss of income due to economic disaster.

Now we’re faced with a disaster of global pandemic proportions. Although we are all at risk of falling ill to the coronavirus, we are not equally at risk of suffering its economic attack. Once again, local action will need to lead the nation.

Unemployment insurance was created both as an emergency-room response and as preventive care for the economy — slow the economy’s free-fall and ensure that workers never bear such extreme risk again. Yet, we failed to learn from our successes.

In the interim, we let the unemployment insurance system erode through under-funding and outdated rules. The number of workers covered by the insurance was at an all-time low at the onset of our current crisis. When the COVID-19 job hemorrhaging began, we had a tattered bandage, not the tourniquet we needed.

In a recent report, “O.C.‘s most vulnerable communities hardest hit economically by pandemic,” published on the UCI School of Social Ecology website, my co-authors and I illustrate what this tattered bandage looks like for neighborhoods in Orange County.

Workers in Orange County’s low-income, immigrant and communities of color are most at risk of not receiving state and federal unemployment benefits in the wake of the COVID-19 unemployment crisis.

The majority of the highest-risk neighborhoods are concentrated in Santa Ana. These vulnerable communities stand to benefit least from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

The CARES Act, signed into law last month, provides $2.2 trillion in economic relief and greatly expands the unemployment insurance system.

Orange County’s immigrant communities are at greatest risk of being left out of economic recovery efforts.

Undocumented immigrant workers do not qualify for unemployment insurance, even when working jobs that generate taxes for the system. Authorized immigrant workers may be ruled ineligible for federal benefits.

Others work in the cash economy — jobs typically left out of unemployment insurance. Add to this murky eligibility rules and an overrun system and the prospects for shoring up the economic well-being of O.C.’s immigrant families looks grim.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement of a $125 million relief fund for immigrants without legal status sets an important precedent for efforts that provide targeted relief to California’s communities most vulnerable to the COVID-19 economic crisis. But, more bold action is required.

The COVID-19 crisis throws Orange County’s pronounced local disparities into sharp relief. Our shared local economic health deserves an even sharper, more strategic, and more equitable relief effort. Like Wisconsin during the Great Depression, California and Orange County should lead the nation in policy first-response.

The writer is professor and chair of urban planning and public policy at UC Irvine.

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