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By Jeanne Kuang. CalMatters
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Saturday that he vetoed a bill ordering the state to explore extending unemployment benefits to undocumented workers, dashing the hopes of advocates who have campaigned since the COVID pandemic for the expansion.
The veto of Senate Bill 227 marks the second time the House has blocked the idea, and the third time this month that it has denied opening state programs to undocumented immigrants.
Last weekend, Newsom rejected a bill allowing undocumented students to access jobs on campuses in the University of California and California State University systems, citing legal concerns. And earlier this month, he vetoed an expansion allowing undocumented Californians to apply for state first-time homebuyer assistance, a program that was underfunded.
In his veto message for the unemployment bill, Newsom wrote that it “sets impractical timelines, has operational problems, and requires funding that was not included in the budget.”
Veronica Alvarado, a labor advocate who campaigned for the bill, called the decision “shameful.”
“California is the fifth largest economy in the world, driven in large part by immigrant labor,” Alvarado said in a press release. “It is shameful that Governor Newsom has not led our state toward a fair system for all workers.”
The vetoes come amid increasingly hostile rhetoric on immigration during the presidential election.
After Republican lawmakers criticized the homebuying bill during the session, it went viral on conservative media outlets and attracted the attention of billionaire Elon Musk, who wrote on his social media platform X that the state was incentivizing immigration with the promise of state benefits. Musk is a backer of former President Donald Trump, who has made illegal immigration his signature issue.
Newsom wrote that the campus jobs bill was too risky, given that federal law prohibits hiring undocumented immigrants. His veto message suggested that advocates seek legal protection in court before pushing the legislation.
Ahilan Arulanantham, a UCLA law professor and one of the architects of a novel theory arguing why UC can legally hire undocumented students, said he “couldn’t remember the last time I saw a major, nationally profiled Democrat block any opportunity for undocumented youth.”
Mike Madrid, a Republican consultant, said vetoing those bills is a safe political move for Newsom when Democrats nationally are perceived to be weak on border security. Vice President Kamala Harris’s rightward tilt on immigration has helped narrow that polling gap in key states, Madrid said, but he described any immigration-related bills as too volatile for Newsom to touch.
“For a California governor to sign something that would not be popular in those states in an area where she has only just begun to close the gap would be very problematic politically,” he said. “I suspect the bigger consideration is, ‘Could this affect the race for the White House?’”
Newsom’s office declined to comment. “The veto messages speak for themselves,” spokesman Brandon Richards said earlier this week.
But in his veto message, the governor sought to deflect criticism, noting in his veto letter to the unemployment bill that the state “has taken important steps to promote inclusion and equity for undocumented workers and mixed-status families who contribute significantly to California’s economy and local communities.”
He called on Congress to create pathways to citizenship for long-term residents and stressed that he wanted both a “fair immigration system” and a “secure border.”
Not all political observers are convinced the election influenced their decisions. Andrew Acosta, a Democratic strategist, said there were other “problems” with the bills, such as costs, and said the GOP already uses California to attack Democrats on immigration.
“Ninety percent of what happens in the state of California is tied to the budget,” he said.
“If Donald Trump wants to make California a topic of debate, he has plenty of material to do so. These three bills are not going to be decisive for the campaign.”
Unemployment insurance was one of the last expansions that advocates hoped California would undertake during a series of budget-boosting years when the state committed billions of dollars to extending important safety net programs to undocumented residents.
The state is home to more than 1.8 million undocumented immigrants, who have become eligible for driver’s licenses, the earned income tax credit and, recently, Medi-Cal. During the pandemic, the state created a disaster relief program for immigrants, and lawmakers allowed immigrants to receive some state stimulus checks.
But the state's budget deficit has slowed the pace. The state food assistance program for immigrants over 55 was scheduled to be expanded next year, but will be postponed until 2027.
Yeni Linares, an undocumented worker from Fontana who campaigned for expanded unemployment, said that when her work dried up during the pandemic, there were no lifelines.
Her job cleaning houses and office buildings, she said, was cut from five to three days a week, and she made only $80 a day. Her family lost their car and apartment, she said, so they crowded into a relative's house, where four families lived under one roof. During the move, she never received a paycheck.
“The government completely abandoned me,” said the 47-year-old, who has worked as a domestic worker for 19 years. “It is not easy for an undocumented family to recover from such a huge impact. For us, the pandemic never ended.”
Though the proposal was born in the wake of the pandemic, advocates say it can also help as climate change exacerbates job instability for vulnerable workers. Farmworkers are losing days of work during storms and periods of extreme heat, and domestic workers during wildfires. Linares said she has missed work for two weeks straight this year as wildfires have swept through the mountains north of San Bernardino, where she cleans houses.
The bill was the second attempt by activists to get Newsom to approve unemployment benefits.
In 2022, he vetoed a similar bill, arguing there was no money for the program. The unemployment insurance system is funded by state and federal taxes on employers; since the pandemic, California’s system is $20 billion in debt. Because of federal restrictions, state funds would likely be needed to fund a similar program for immigrants.
Such programs are rare, but other states have established them in recent years. In 2022, Colorado created an unemployment program for undocumented workers and New York created one during the pandemic that has since ended.
Workers’ rights advocates in California tried again this year. The bill, which originally sought to give undocumented workers who lost their jobs up to $300 a week in benefits for up to 20 weeks, was watered down at the end of the legislative session to instead direct the Employment Development Department to study the issue and decide by the end of next March how to expand the program, including finding a funding source.
The bill's author, Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, D-Los Angeles, said in August that she hoped it might prompt the department to consider undocumented workers as it undertakes a technological overhaul of the unemployment system.
Before the veto, Linares criticized Newsom for delaying his decision and called the political rhetoric surrounding immigration an “injustice.”
“We are fed up with this,” he said. “We don’t ask for anything for free. We see it as something we have earned through our work.”
CalMatters higher education reporter Mikhail Zinshteyn contributed to this story.
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