NJ ‘Excluded Immigrant’ Fund Was Set Up To Fail, Advocates Say

NEW JERSEY — NOTE: Read our update to this article here.

Remember that highly anticipated state fund that was set up to help "excluded" New Jersey immigrants amid the coronavirus pandemic? It was likely set up for failure from the start, a new report alleges.

When the Excluded New Jerseyans Fund (ENJF) was launched in October 2021 with $40 million of federal coronavirus funding, advocates cheered it as a sign that officials were finally starting to listen to their demands for financial relief. The idea was simple: Get much-needed funds into the hands of families who were ineligible for other forms of aid, such as unemployment benefits or stimulus checks.

In December, the fund got a $10 million boost from the federal American Rescue Plan, putting the total at $50 million and getting another round of applause from advocates.

However, many of those cheers have now turned to boos after $34 million of the fund was “re-appropriated” for other state expenses, including payroll. Read More: Immigrant Rights Advocates Blast NJ For 'Raiding' COVID Fund

Despite only reaching a small percentage of those in need of relief, the program is set to expire on Jan. 31. Learn more and apply online here.

Some advocates have been blasting the program since it launched, alleging that it’s needlessly overcomplicated and plagued with red tape and delays. But according to a new report from New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP), it gets worse: the fund was likely destined to fail from the get-go.

Even before the fund was cut, the $50 million was only enough to cover 25,000 people or 12,500 households — just a fraction of those excluded from federal pandemic relief. That includes the state’s estimated 500,000 undocumented residents, 300,000 of whom are in the labor force, the NJPP said.

Undocumented immigrants in New Jersey paid an estimated $1.1 billion in federal taxes and $604.3 million in state and local taxes in 2018. Read More: Deporting NJ's Undocumented Immigrants Would Cost State Millions In Taxes

“Even at its full amount, the Excluded New Jerseyans Fund would have fallen short of meeting the needs of communities and families,” said Jon Shure, interim president and founder of the NJPP.

“The goal needs to be helping all families get the support they need to make it through this unprecedented crisis,” Shure emphasized.

The report, "Recovery for All: Excluded New Jerseyans Fund Falls Short," also found that the maximum benefit of the ENJF — $2,000 for individuals and $4,000 max per household — pales in comparison to aid provided to others facing financial hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

An unemployed New Jersey resident who was eligible for unemployment insurance and was unemployed for the average (mean) duration of unemployment (currently 29 weeks) was eligible for a minimum of $12,380 and an average of $21,738 in unemployment insurance, the NJPP said.

Beyond unemployment insurance, residents with a Social Security number were also eligible to receive up to $3,200, and $2,500 per child, in direct stimulus payments if they met income thresholds established by the federal CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan.

Read the full report here.

‘AN IMPORTANT FIRST STEP’

While the fund was beset with problems from the beginning, the concept behind it is solid — and very much needed, the NJPP pointed out.

“The Excluded New Jerseyans Fund marks an important first step in recognizing that all communities were hurt by the pandemic, even those ineligible for federal relief,” said Nicole Rodriguez, NJPP research director and report author.

“This is a vital program, and the Murphy administration deserves credit for setting it up, but it’s clear that the fund needs a boost to meet its stated goal of assisting those who have gone almost two years without relief,” Rodriguez said.

Similar programs exist in other states — including New York, Washington, Colorado, Oregon and Illinois — and in dozens of municipalities across the country, the NJPP said.

Immigrant community members and advocates have sounded the alarm for months on the need for more funding to raise benefit levels and reach more people, a simpler application process, and additional support for outreach, advertising and application processing.

“The ENJF did not have adequate infrastructure to evaluate applications and did not create a robust enough outreach program to reach the hundreds of thousands of eligible individuals across New Jersey,” the NJPP stated.

For example, New York state gave out $2.1 billion in aid in less than two months, whereas New Jersey gave out only a “tiny fraction” of that amount over a much longer time frame.

The report recommends that New Jersey lawmakers improve the ENJF with higher benefits and enough funding to reach more residents, highlighting neighboring New York’s state-funded Excluded Workers Fund where eligible residents could receive up to $15,600 per person. The report also lifts up Washington state’s COVID-19 Immigrant Relief Fund as an example of a comparable program funded with federal dollars.

“The original decision to exclude noncitizens from federal pandemic relief is a relic of the Trump administration, one of the most hateful and regressive regimes of our lifetime,” said Amy Torres with New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice. “We applaud NJPP’s report for validating what community members have said all along: New Jersey can and must do more to deliver a recovery for all.”

• See related article: NJ Latino Groups Reach 200K Voters With COVID-19 Relief Campaign
• See related article: NJ Advocates Demand COVID Aid For Immigrants, Find Ally In Church
• See related article: New Jersey Immigrants Deserve Coronavirus Aid, 100 Teachers Say

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