By the time the next State budget passes, it will be over two years since immigrant New Jerseyans were excluded from federal pandemic relief. Immigrant and other excluded New Jerseyans have had to make impossible choices between putting food on the table, accruing debts, and providing for their families at a time when health, housing, and other social safety nets have continued to fail them.

NJAIJ is a proud supporter of the Recovery For All Campaign which won the first-of-its-kind Excluded New Jerseyans Fund, a program that provides one time relief to eligible households. However, the initial $40 million allocated to the program will serve less than 10 percent of those individuals and families that are in need of aid. Furthermore, the one-time payments of $2,000-4,000 per household is insufficient to make up for a year of job loss, increased expenses due to illness, and other COVID-19 related hardships that have disproportionately impacted immigrants and communities of Color.

We support this coalition, alongside Make the Road New Jersey, to call for a $1 billion investment in the program using American Rescue Plan dollars, which include provisions for “a cash transfer program… [to] focus on unemployed workers or low- and moderate-income families, which have faced disproportionate economic harms due to the pandemic.”