Economy
New York to give up to $15,600 to undocumented migrants who lost work due to Covid
Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York lawmakers struck a deal Tuesday on a $2.1 billion fund for undocumented essential workers who lost their jobs because of the Covid-19 pandemic, The New York Times reported.
The “Excluded Workers Fund” could provide payments to hundreds of thousands of people excluded from other pandemic relief.
The measure passed in the New York legislature this week with a vote of 42-21, as part of a broader $212 billion state budget agreement. New York will now offer one-time payments of up to $15,600 to undocumented immigrants who lost work during the pandemic.
Undocumented workers that are able to verify that they are state residents, ineligible for federal unemployment benefits and lost income as a result of the pandemic, could receive up to $15,600, the equivalent of $300 per week for the last year, according to the Times.
Others undocumented immigrants who are unable to meet the same level of verification will be eligible for up to $3,200.
The Fiscal Policy Institute, a New York based policy group, estimated that 290,000 workers will benefit from the Excluded Worker Fund. About 92,000 workers in New York state will be eligible for the full $15,600 payment.
Fox News contributor and former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer slammed the Excluded Workers Fund, calling New York “one messed up state.”
“Many American taxpayers are struggling to make ends meet. Businesses by law are not supposed to hire people who are here illegally. So what does NY do? It takes money from taxpayers and gives it to people who are here illegally. NY is one messed up state,” Fleischer wrote on Twitter.
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Progressive California is digging itself deeper and deeper into a literal energy crisis. Last week, twenty members of the Air Quality Management District “approved the plan to phase out and ban gas-powered systems that emit nitrogen oxide, or NOx, and that contribute to air pollution. Three board members were absent, and one member abstained” writes National Review.
The ban will phase out the sale of new gas furnaces and water heaters in Northern California. As a result, it will “be costly for residents, will further burden an already stretched electric grid, and will have minimal environmental impact” energy experts and economists told National Review.
“The move is emblematic of California’s approach to energy, which involves ramping up the demand for electricity while gutting the state’s ability to meet its electricity needs,” they said.
Specifically, it is “a regressive policy that’s going to increase costs in a state that is already unaffordable, it’s going to do minimal in terms of reducing [greenhouse-gas] emissions, and it’s going to stress a problem that we already have no plan of addressing, which is [that] our grid is going to be unable to provide reliable electricity,” said Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow in business and economics at the California-based Pacific Research Institute who is studying the state’s electricity shortfall.
Winegarden said California already has a major housing-affordability problem. “And now we’re going to make it even less affordable,” he said. While there are state and federal incentives and subsidies for people to purchase and install electric heating systems, Winegarden, an economist, called it a “shell game.”
“Subsidies don’t get rid of the costs,” he said. “They just redistribute the costs.”
The board’s vote did not address natural-gas stoves because it doesn’t regulate indoor air pollution, notes National Review. However, earlier this year, the Biden administration’s Consumer Product Safety Commission was considering restrictions, and possibly a ban, on natural-gas stoves.
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