Ripple Effect
Eduardo's family, in better days. (L to R) Alejandra, Angelica, parents Martha and Juan, and Eduardo.
PIECE BY PIECE, EDUARDO’S LIFE HAS CRUMBLED. HE’S A UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SOPHOMORE. HE’S NOT SICK, BUT THE COLLEGE EDUCATION EDUARDO WORKED SO HARD TO ACHIEVE IS THREATENED, AS COVID-19 HAS MOST OF CALIFORNIA ON HOLD.
By Kate Sequeira
For Eduardo, early doses of pandemic reality hit him back on March 11: The NBA season was canceled, Tom Hanks got sick and the University of Southern California extended its remote learning plan.
The coronavirus crisis was just catching fire -- fear was growing quickly around the United States as the number of reported cases passed 1,200.
Two months later, Eduardo, 20, remembers the day he left the USC campus and boarded a train for home, anxiously keeping his distance from other passengers as it rolled south from Los Angeles to San Diego. (Eduardo’s parents are undocumented residents, so palabra. is not publishing his last name.)
Today, deep into the devastating COVID-19 outbreak that has claimed tens of thousands of American lives, Eduardo’s worries have moved to new and more difficult challenges than simply keeping up with online classes as this semester draws to a close.
Eduardo needs to find a summer job so he can pool enough money to afford his off-campus apartment in the fall, when -- he hopes -- he’ll return for his junior year.
Right now, his biggest worry is helping his family, day to day.
His father has put in only a fraction of the hours he routinely worked before the coronavirus.
Following an executive order from San Diego County officials, his workplace of 28 years -- an upscale Italian restaurant near a San Diego beach -- was shuttered.
When California’s lockdown took effect, his father became one of almost 2 million food service workers in California to see their jobs disappear or shrink. Those workers, many of them Latinos and immigrants like Juan, Eduardo’s father, account for at least 11% of the state’s workforce.
It didn’t end there for Juan. His second job, at a bustling Mexican restaurant, diminished as business shifted to takeout only.
At the start of the California shutdown, Juan found himself waiting, on call, in the family’s home in National City, a working-class town just south of San Diego. But now, as self-isolation has established itself as the new normal and the beach-side restaurant has regained a bit of its footing Juan is working four to five days a week. The few hours of work are critical: As an undocumented worker, he’s not eligible for unemployment insurance or any of the federal aid going out to displaced American workers.
“This is fortunate that my dad is in a situation where he's still working, and obviously it's not the same amount as before all of this but it's still getting something,” Eduardo said. “And if he wasn't working at all and then he wasn't getting any aid, I think it would be a much different situation. … Right now, luckily, we feel like we can weather the storm through this.”
Still, it’s not the same for the family. Juan’s once-robust income from two restaurant jobs, with tips during extra-long work weeks, is now just barely enough.
“Here in the house we are trying to economize, we are trying to pay the money, the little we have, and we are checking all of our budget,” Juan said. “We are careful to not spend what we can’t buy. We have to be careful with the money.”
Juan hopes the family’s financial circumstances won’t affect Eduardo’s studies, or those of his two daughters now in high school and community college.
Eduardo attends a USC class, online, from his laptop at home near San Diego.
Eduardo was the only other working member of the family. At USC, he took shifts in the architecture library, earning $300 every two weeks. The university paid work-study students through the end of the semester, and that income will vanish with the start of summer.
Meanwhile, as he considers staying home in San Diego if USC is online-only in the fall, his college expenses continue to mount. The building management company has told student tenants that they cannot break their apartment contracts so long as classes remain online. That means Eduardo must find someone to sublease, or else pay rent for an unused apartment.
“It's like around $1,000 per person per month,” Eduardo said. “So that's kind of like the main thing I'm worried about right now. If classes are gonna go in session, I’m paying rent … If not, if I'm gonna have to stay back home and just try to find someone to (sublease) while I try to find a job.”
Eduardo has not yet considered applying for aid from USC through the CARES Act. The family is still holding on financially. However, he is considering taking some time off from school. If classes remain remote, he said, he does not believe the price of a USC tuition should remain so high if it’s just for online schooling.
“It would make more sense if I would take the semester off during the fall, but keep working at a job and just save up money that way,” he said. “Just so if I do return in the spring, then I have more money just to not have to worry month to month.”
He still owes $800 of tuition for the current school year. Although his father wants to pay it, the family is unsure about anything beyond survival expenditures.
For now, the family is carefully limiting expenses and not wasting food. There’s enough saved to cover the upcoming month, Juan said.
One glimmer of hope is the relief fund for undocumented workers promised by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, although that’s on pause amid court challenges.
But even if a fund for the undocumented is set up, Juan is not sure he’d apply: He said that despite the coronavirus emergency, he remains afraid to give any personal information to the government.
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Kate Sequeira is a junior studying journalism at the University of Southern California. She is the editor-in-chief of the university's newspaper, the Daily Trojan.