Direct Exposure
As society stays dormant to slow the coronavirus contagion, Latino workers and their families face a particular threat.
Story by Jason Buch
Photos by Jovelle Tamayo
In the time since commerce has ground to a halt in Seattle, near the first flashpoint of the nation’s coronavirus outbreak, Nancy has passed the time playing with her 9-year-old son in their backyard, helping him with his homework, cleaning and cooking and cleaning again – anything to stay busy.
What she can’t do, she says as she bounces about the 5-bedroom house she and her husband share with her parents, is put food on the table or help pay the mortgage. Even by early March, business at the hair salon where she rents a chair had already slowed to a trickle. School closures then kept most of her clients home with their kids. Others heeded the quick warnings from public health authorities to avoid close contact. And then, her husband’s construction work disappeared as well, taking with it most of their income, which she estimated was about $65,000 a year before the rent and other fees she paid at the salon.
The death toll among elderly residents in a nursing home in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland -- the nation’s first fatal cases of COVID-19 -- drove home just how lethal exposure to the coronavirus can be.
As the COVID-19 pandemic death toll soars into the tens of thousands in the United States, and thousands of new cases are reported daily, clouds of uncertainty thicken over people like Nancy.
She’s a 34-year-old from Mexico. She’s lived in the Seattle area most of her life. And, apart from her salon work, she has a side gig at a restaurant that’s doing slow takeout business, which is allowed under the state’s new rules. But Nancy wonders if the salon will reopen when life returns to normal. (Nancy is an undocumented resident, so palabra. is not using her last name.)
“I depend on that,” she said. “At my business, I pay a monthly rent. I pay insurance for that business. But if I'm not going to work, I'm not going to pay. Right now there's no income. It's going to hurt everybody really bad. Especially I feel like our community is going to be hurt really bad.”
Some 10 million immigrants like Nancy will bear the brunt of the economic downturn as companies across the country whittle payroll to a bare minimum. Many office employees can log in to email from their couches, or brainstorm with colleagues over video conferencing. But store owners, construction workers and service industry employees don’t have that luxury. They must decide: Stay home and lose income, or risk contracting COVID-19 and spreading it to family members.
In the U.S. the pandemic has shined a light on long-standing inequalities that have kept blacks and Latinos at an economic disadvantage and less access to healthcare. The consequences of that are now clear: The coronavirus appears to be more lethal in black and Latino communities. And, as the U.S. slides into a recession, undocumented immigrants, the majority of whom are from Latin America, emerge as the hardest hit financially.
About 10% of undocumented workers own businesses, according to the New American Economy. People who are undocumented are also more likely than U.S. citizens to work in the service, production, construction and transportation industries. These are be-there,-in-person jobs that don’t allow work from home. An immediate example of the economic consequence of COVID-19 is the closure, in many states, of restaurants and other nonessential consumer service businesses. Service industry workers, who the Pew Research Center says make up nearly a third of the nation’s undocumented workforce, will suffer. Even worse: they’re largely being left out of stimulus and recovery efforts.
“The concern right now between my clients ... is that they depend pretty much on what they sell, what they make every day,” said Jaqueline García, a microenterprise and outreach specialist who works with immigrants and refugees at StartZone, a program that helps small businesses in the Seattle area. “Now with this pandemic crisis here, many of them will not have any options. They live day by day on what they get from their businesses.”
Doris Landaverde, a custodian at Harvard who's complained of being asked to continue working, but with inadequate safety equipment. She's since experienced symptoms of COVID-19 infection. Photo courtesy of TPS Alliance.
Little hope of a bailout
Across the country, organizations serving immigrant communities also see grim prospects.
In Denver, Ashley Harrington, an attorney at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, described the plight of one client’s brother, an unaccompanied minor who’d been released from government custody after requesting asylum.
The brother was confident about the future, Harrington said.
“Then I got a panicked call,” she said. “Both he and his partner work in the restaurant industry. They’re laid off for a time. And now he can’t pay his rent. It’s really hitting hard even families that were working and doing fine.”
Anxiety isn’t limited to undocumented immigrants. The majority of those in the U.S. without authorization are from Latin America, and in the U.S., Latinos are more concerned about personal finances during the coronavirus outbreak than other Americans, according to a recent poll by Pew. There’s precedent for those fears: Latinos as a whole suffered more loss of wealth during the Great Recession than other U.S. racial and ethnic groups, according to Pew.
The majority of U.S. Latinos are citizens, and those who can’t work during the outbreak will qualify for the relief provided by Congress and local and state governments. People in the U.S. without permission are generally not eligible for federal assistance, and government efforts to boost the economy have been a mixed bag for undocumented workers.
“If you have kids who are U.S. citizens, they can apply for public assistance,” said Gerardo Menchaca, an immigration attorney in San Antonio. “But you as the undocumented person can’t.”
Expanded Small Business Administration loans are available to business owners regardless of immigration status, García said. Millions of undocumented immigrants pay taxes without social security numbers, but won’t be eligible for the $1,200 tax rebate included in the $2 trillion stimulus bill signed by President Donald Trump in March. The bill also cuts out so-called “mixed status” families, where one of the primary filers has a social security number and one uses an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, the method many undocumented immigrants use to pay taxes. If mixed status spouses file separately in 2019, the partner with a social security number will be eligible for the tax credit, according to an analysis by the National Immigration Law Center.
“The fact that we are cutting out millions of families, many of whom are at the front lines of helping us through the recovery process of this pandemic, from vital economic lifelines makes no sense if the goals of this relief package are in part to help us achieve some economic stability,” said Avideh Moussavian, the center’s legislative director. “From our perspective it’s wrong, and dangerous in fact, to have these exclusions. You’re now putting even more intense economic pressure on families and workers to continue to work in dangerous conditions.”
Her organization is calling on Congress to pass new legislation that will offer the rebate to those who file with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. The compromise bill cut out a number of protections for immigrants that Democratic members of the house had wanted. In a statement applauding the economic relief bill’s passage, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-California, said she’s still pushing for supplemental legislation that “provides cash benefits for all individuals who file taxes with an (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number).”
It’s also unclear how immigrants in the U.S. with Temporary Protected Status will fare. TPS stalls deportation of undocumented immigrants who cannot go home because of extreme situations in their countries, like war or natural disaster. They can work and get Social Security numbers, but do not qualify for many social benefits.
Doris Landaverde is a TPS recipient and part of the maintenance team at Harvard University. She complained of not having proper protection on the job and came down with symptoms of coronavirus infection.
"I want to bring up how important immigrants are to this country, how important TPS recipients are,” Landaverde said. “We have to fight for permanent residency, for workers' rights, because this (university) administration is not giving us the proper equipment to keep us safe … Every day we can bring this virus home, and make the kids sick. The university can pay for housing so we can stay safe and away from our families. People have to understand, immigrants are important in how we sacrifice our families to keep American citizens safe."
A Tom Douglas restaurant on Sunday, March 15, 2020, in Seattle, Wash. Photograph: Jovelle Tamayo for palabra.
The first epicenter
The Seattle area has been ground zero for the coronavirus outbreak. It saw the country’s first confirmed case of COVID-19 in January and the first deaths in late February. Public health authorities responded with calls for residents to stay home. Major events were canceled, followed by business closures and a stay-at-home order. Much of the country has taken similar steps.
In Seattle, traffic on highways has eased but pedestrians are still out on sidewalks. When the sun is out, residents flock to green spaces, although the closure of parking lots in late March thinned out the crowds. Grocery stores do steady sales at all hours. Restaurants are allowed to continue takeout service, but some owners are finding the amount of business they’re doing doesn’t warrant staying open.
In the suburban shopping center where Nancy works, almost all of the dozen or so businesses were shuttered one weekday morning. A coffee shop advertised drive-thru service. A couple restaurants had open signs, but business has been slow, Nancy said.
For families, immediate help came when Washington State placed a moratorium on residential evictions until mid-April. Uber-liberal Seattle halted commercial evictions as well.
The commercial space eviction ban hadn’t yet reached Seattle’s more diverse southern suburbs by early April, leaving business owners there wondering about their future. Only a couple miles from where Nancy works, one of her friends co-owns a beauty salon. (palabra. is not identifying her because she’s undocumented and has a unique first name.) The moratorium on residential evictions will help Nancy’s friend keep the apartment where she lives with her 7-year-old son. But it won’t help her as business loans and storefront rent come due.
PALABRA, JOVELLE TAMAYO, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, COVID19, CORONAVIRUS, LATINOS
N helps her 9-year-old son with his schoolwork. He said he wishes he had his “real” teacher to learn from. Photograph: Jovelle Tamayo for palabra.
An uncertain future
“I have some savings, but I don't know how long this is going to take,” said the 38-year-old woman, who is originally from Mexico “I'm worried about the rent and the lenders. I don't know what I'm going to do.”
After 11 years working in housekeeping, owning the salon has been a steady source of income that provides care for her son and a degree of independence. During a mid-March visit to her salon with journalists, she stood nervously at the entrance and talked about her concerns for the future. Her business is tucked in a now-abandoned strip mall, in a neighborhood that’s home to restaurants and other shops run by immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America, all mixed in with typical Seattle amenities like yoga studios and coffee shops.
“I’ve been thinking all night about what’s going to happen,” she said. “I feel really stressed. That’s the only job I have. I was looking on my phone to find another job, but I don’t have a good Social Security number, and they want that.”
Some municipal and state governments are rolling out relief efforts that don’t require recipients to have social security numbers, but those pale compared to the massive federal programs implemented in response to coronavirus. García, the microloan specialist, said she’s waiting for more information before advising clients to apply for grants out of $5 million the state of Washington has set aside to keep small businesses afloat.
“This is not about immigration status, this is about the local economy,” she said. “If we don't have healthy businesses, that would be affecting everybody.”
Alki Beach in Seattle, Wash. on Tuesday, March 17, 2020. Photograph: Jovelle Tamayo for palabra.
The cost of new immigration rules
The situation is made worse, service providers and immigration lawyers said, by a new regulation put into place by the Trump administration just before the novel strain of coronavirus became a pandemic. The “public charge rule” bars legal entry into the U.S. and prohibits lawful permanent residency to immigrants already in the U.S. who are considered likely to need public assistance.
That has only fueled the fear many have about seeking any support, even healthcare, in the middle of a pandemic.
Zara Marselian, the chief executive officer of La Maestra Community Health Centers in San Diego, said restaurant closures in California are hurting clients of her organization’s microlending program, many of them undocumented. She said many run small commissaries that provide food to restaurants, and now that business has dried up. These clients were previously self-sufficient, using La Maestra microloans to open small businesses. With income dissipating, they’ll need assistance, Marselian said. She worries they will be reluctant to seek help.
La Maestra has had to assure clients that using the clinic’s services, like its food bank, won’t impact their immigration status.
“It just came at a horrible time, this public charge rule,” Marselian said.
Obispo is a landscaper in Washington D.C. As an undocumented immigrant, he's concerned he'll soon be left without work and ineligible for a government rescue check. Photo by Andrea Arzaba
Isolation and uncertainty
In Seattle, Nancy’s salon-owner friend lives close to a clinic, “but if I feel sick I'm really afraid to go there. I don't feel comfortable. We're immigrants and sometimes we're afraid (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is looking for us, and people are really afraid to go to those parts. We prefer to stay home. I'm so afraid, I prefer to stay home and rest.”
The COVID-19 outbreak is leaving members of the already-vulnerable undocumented community feeling more isolated. Nancy said she’s in a text group with her salon coworkers as they discuss ways to stay afloat. The stylists are offering discounts for prepaid haircuts to generate income — and hoping they can someday deliver.
Nancy’s coworkers don’t know she’s undocumented, something in the past she was grateful they hadn’t asked about. Now, as they send each other tips on how to apply for assistance during this tough time, Nancy said she realizes that much of what’s available to them isn’t an option for her.
“Being the only Latino in that salon is difficult,” Nancy said. “They don’t know some of the stuff I’m going through. They have options like food stamps and things like that we don’t have.”
For those who haven’t been able to visit family members abroad for years, sometimes decades, COVID-19 raises new uncertainty.
In Washington, D.C., Obispo, an undocumented landscaper originally from Guatemala, said his work remains steady, but he’s worried about the widening orders to stay at home. Obispo supports a girlfriend and a family in Guatemala.
“If my family in Guatemala gets sick, I would be very affected because I can't leave the country,” he said. “I would not be able to be with them physically. Also, I would not have enough money to leave.”
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Andrea Arzaba and Cora Cervantes contributed to this story.
Jason Buch is a freelance reporter based in Seattle, where he writes about criminal justice, immigration and the environment. He spent a decade covering the U.S-Mexico border for newspapers in Texas.
Cervantes is a freelance journalist in Los Angeles who focuses on immigration and diversity, equality and inclusion issues. She has produced stories for multimedia outlets, including NBC News, Al-Jazeera, NPR’s Latino USA, and Narratively.
Arzaba is a freelance journalist currently based in D.C. She holds a master’s degree in Latin American Studies from Georgetown University. She’s reported from throughout Latin America for Transparency International, 100Reporters and palabra.
Jovelle Tamayo is an independent documentary photographer, visual journalist and youth educator. She was born in Olongapo City, Philippines, and raised in Central New Jersey. She is currently based in Seattle, Washington.