Cutoff of federal jobless aid in the US leaves millions of workers scrambling to make ends meet
An estimated 7.5 million workers in the US lost their $300-a-week federal unemployment benefits last week. That is after the federal government reduced federal unemployment benefits from $600 per week in summer 2020.
Some working-class parents, like 33-year-old Amanda Rinehart of Allentown, Pennsylvania, are unable to return to work because of the need to provide care for their children who are at risk for contracting serious cases of COVID-19 if they return to packed classrooms and day care centers. She told the New York Times, “They should not cut these benefits off until there is a vaccine for all the little humans of all ages, because there are parents like me that have children that are high risk for Covid.”
Her 8-year-old son has asthma and is unable to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, like all children under the age of 12 in the US. Since she has no one to take care of him while he remains at home, she left her job as a hotel assistant manager and was able to get by on about $560 per week in unemployment benefits from the federal and state governments. “I have no idea what I’m going to do once these benefits stop,” she said.
The Biden administration ended four US federal pandemic unemployment programs on September 4. The same week that unemployment assistance was cut, the US Supreme Court ruled to end the federal moratorium on evictions that millions of renters relied on for stable housing during the pandemic. States began to see waves of eviction filings in the first week of the end of the moratorium, with some states seeing eviction filings well above average.
The ending of these programs, which had the widespread backing of both Republican and Democratic officials, has left 11 million workers in the US desperate as they scramble to figure out how they will provide for themselves and their families.
One of these unemployed workers, Ana Cepera, told NBC 6 South Florida that she was facing eviction along with her three children because of the abrupt end of federal benefits. “Right now, I’m without a job… Every day I’m like, OK, is today the day that they’re going to tell me I’m going to lose my home?”
The benefits, which amounted to little more than $1,000 to $1,500 per month, served as a lifeline for millions of workers who would otherwise have been on the brink of starvation and homelessness. Yet many of these same workers found it a struggle to navigate underfunded state benefit systems to receive the benefits they were due after they lost their jobs through no fault of their own. Robin Woods of Pennsylvania, who lost her job of two decades in a layoff during the pandemic, described the struggle to stay afloat to 11 News: “It’s been a struggle from day one. I’d get a lump sum, and then I wouldn’t get it. I have had nothing but problems.”
The Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) provided an additional $300 a week to workers who received at least $1 of regular state or federal unemployment benefits. The other unemployment programs ended by the Biden administration programs include Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), which provided unemployment benefits to those not traditionally eligible to receive unemployment benefits, such as gig workers and freelancers; Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC),which provided additional weeks of unemployment benefits to workers who exhausted all eligible weeks of benefits in the state’s unemployment system; and Mixed Earners Unemployment Compensation (MEUC), which gave an additional $100 a week to eligible workers who earned self-employment income along with wages earned with an employer.
Situations like those of Ana Cepera and Amanda Rinehart are mirrored by the experiences of unprecedented millions of workers in the wealthiest nation in the world. The Democrats and Republicans, who speak for the interests of the rich, have turned a blind eye to the suffering that their policies have created.
In June, after 25 Republican-led states and one Democratic-led state exited the federal unemployment program early, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki commented that the governors of those states had “every right” to end them early and that the Biden administration “never proposed making the benefits permanent or doing so over the long term.”
Since then, government officials and the press have parroted the hopes of big businesses that the millions of unemployed will be forced by threat of destitution to accept low-wage work in precarious jobs that expose workers to the deadly SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The reality is different. A recent New York Times article reveals that government assistance programs during the pandemic actually kept millions of US workers out of poverty compared to before the pandemic. Roughly 9.1 percent of US workers were considered living in poverty in 2020, a significant drop from 11.8 percent in 2019 and the lowest number since records on poverty levels began to be recorded in 1967, according to the Times .
Data also shows that ending unemployment benefits has done little to compel workers to take on jobs that are dangerous or don’t suit their financial needs or work experience. From April through July, states that cut unemployment early saw only 1.33 percent job growth, states that kept them saw 1.37 percent rise in job growth. There are currently 10.9 million open jobs in US, but most are low wage and in retail, food service and other service industries.
Yet workers are resisting the attempts of the ruling class to push them into dangerous, low-wage work for profits. “We’re still in a pandemic. The idea of being close to hundreds of strangers a day, even while being vaccinated, is not something that appeals to me,” Michael, an out-of-work graphic designer, told CNN Business, explaining why he did not pick up a job as a server at a restaurant while he waited for an opening in his field.
A survey conducted in May by the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics showed that 10 percent of respondents were uncomfortable returning to any kind of in-person work. They mainly cited health concerns over the pandemic and worried that no amount of precautions that employers attempted to use would be effective enough to protect them.
The survey showed 34 percent of respondents said that they wanted social distancing at their workplaces and 33 percent wanted mask mandates, both of which virtually no employer in the US is willing to guarantee for the sake of gaining as much productivity and profit as possible from each worker.
The bipartisan ending of the federal unemployment programs and eviction moratorium comes as the US Bureau of Labor Statistics released data on the Consumer Price Index for August, which shows the inflation rate averaged for all consumer goods in the US at 5.3 percent last month. This is only slightly lower than the 5.4 percent inflation rate reported in July.
The US government has cut meager unemployment benefits for millions of workers at the same time that it has overseen a massive shift of $1.8 trillion to US billionaires, according to a recent report from Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies Program on Inequality. Just weeks before the Biden administration ended the federal unemployment programs, President Biden admitted in an address that the US government spent $300 million per day on the two-decade-long war in Afghanistan which ended in a debacle last month.
The rising prices of basic goods coupled with low wages, high levels of unemployment and the uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus pandemic while the richest see their wealth soar to new heights is fueling social tensions of a historic magnitude. Already, the deadly return-to-work drive of the ruling class has caused outbreaks of COVID-19 at workplaces and schools across the US. In most cases, companies, school districts and the unions are not accurately reporting on positive COVID-19 cases in workplaces and schools, sometimes completely blacking out information from the working class and students, further exacerbating the spread of the disease when hospitals all over the US are running out of beds to treat patients.
There is more than enough money to fund a program that will really end the pandemic and social misery for the working class, which requires nationwide lockdowns of in-person schools and non-essential businesses and full compensation for all workers and small business owners affected. Workers are beginning to fight back with their own program to end the attacks on their lives and livelihoods at the behest of corporate profit interests which are aided and abetted by the Democratic party and the trade unions. Workers at Dana auto parts plants across the US and educators in schools around the world have formed rank-and-file committees to take their struggle into their own hands. Through the linking up of these committees under an international and socialist program to expropriate the wealth of the billionaires to satisfy social need, the working class can achieve an end to the pandemic and the right to a safe workplace, a good job and high wages for all.
THESE ARE SOME OF THE MOST EVIL AND SELF-SERVING PEOPLE AMERICA HAS EVER BEEN VICTIMS OF
SW Border Apprehensions in August: More Russians, Turks, Indians, Haitians
(CNSNews.com) – The number of “encounters” with migrants trying to enter the U.S. illegally at the southwest border and coming from countries other than Mexico and the “northern triangle” climbed to a new high of 61,484 in August – a 1,690 percent increase from the same month last year.
Although some of last year’s figures would have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, the August figure for this cohort of apprehended migrants is still up 456 percent from the same month in 2019, and up 1,258 percent from the same month in 2018, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) figures released on Wednesday.
The majority of migrants apprehended along the southern border while trying to get into the U.S. illegally come from Mexico and the northern triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
But when those numbers are excluded, the number of apprehensions of migrants originating from all other countries has reached 308,294 so far this fiscal year, which runs through the end of September.
That’s an increase of 188 percent over the number of encounters for the same 11-month period in FY 2019 (Oct. 2018 - Sept. 2019), when 107,117 were recorded.
This calendar year has seen consistent month-on-month increases in the number of apprehensions of migrants from countries other than Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, with the increases growing more steeply after February: 9,671 in January, 11,909 in February, 25,123 in March, 33,899 in April, 40,675 in May, 47,224 in June, 59,006 in July, and now 61,484 in August.
Migrants from Colombia accounted for one of the larger increase in the number of encounters last month, more than doubling from 751 in July to 1,563 in August.
The number of apprehensions involving Russians, Turks, and Indians also increased month-on-month, from 702 to 757 (up 7.8 percent), 150 to 251 (67.3 percent), and 126 to 374 (196.8 percent), respectively.
Among countries accounting for larger numbers of migrants being apprehended, encounters with migrants from Haiti were up 37 percent, from 5,510 in July to 7,580 in August, and from Cuba were up 26 percent, from 3,557 to 4,494.
The number of encounters with migrants from Venezuela rose slightly, from 6,126 to 6,296 (2.7 percent), from Brazil the increase was from 8,643 to 9,098 (5.2 percent), while encounters with migrants from Nicaragua dropped, from 13,456 in July to 9,948 in August (a 26 percent decrease).
Overall, the CBP reported a total of 208,887 encounters on the southwest border in August, making it the second highest monthly number since fiscal year 2000. The highest was recorded just one month earlier, at 213,534.
Since the beginning of 2021, the number of encounters along the southwest border climbed steadily each month – 78,414 in January, 101,099 in February, 173,281 in March, 178,799 in April, 180,563 in May, 189,020 in June, 213,534 in July – before dropping slightly to August’s 208,887.
The CBP said 25 percent of the August encounters involved individuals who had had at least one prior encounter during the previous 12-month period.
Globalists Unite: Clinton, Bush, Obama Team Up with Biden to Import Afghans
President Joe Biden is looking to team up with former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, as well as multinational corporations, to bring Afghans to the United States for permanent resettlement.
This week, former officials with the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations launched the organization Welcome.us which will work with multinational corporations like Airbnb, Walmart, Starbucks, Instacart, Facebook, Microsoft, and Chobani to provide financial support to Afghans arriving in the U.S. as part of Biden’s massive resettlement operation.
Biden has said he hopes to resettle about 95,000 Afghans across the U.S. over the next 12 months. In a 21-day period from August to September, Biden brought more than 48,000 Afghans to the U.S. for resettlement — a population more than four times that of Jackson, Wyoming.
Instacart is donating 25,000 “culturally appropriate grocery meals” to Afghans arriving in the U.S. while Walmart donates $5000,000 in grant money to Welcome.us. Facebook is giving Welcome.us $150,000 in ad credits.
Starbucks has pledged $350,000 in grants to “nonprofit organizations supporting Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicants and refugee resettlement” while Microsoft executives have said they will give $1 million in “cash, technology, and services to support the evacuation and resettlement of refugees.”
“America is at a critical moment in our history — it is our duty to recognize our common humanity and welcome refugees from Afghanistan with open arms,” Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya said in a statement.
Clinton, Bush, and Obama, as well as former First Ladies Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama, are serving as honorary co-chairs to Welcome.us. The organization is being backed by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors which has ties to billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundation.
The Bushes said in a statement:
Thousands of Afghans stood with us on the front lines to push for a safer world, and now they need our help. We are proud to support Welcome.US and the work to help Afghan families get settled and build new lives. We stand ready to show our new Afghan neighbors and the rest of the world how a welcoming and generous spirit forms the backbone of what makes our country so great.
The launch of the organization comes as Biden readies a plan to hugely open the routes by which refugee resettlement is bankrolled. Specifically, the Biden plan would privatize refugee resettlement so that corporations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can bring refugees to the U.S.
Axios reports:
The plan being put together by the State Department would allow private companies, advocacy groups and local communities to directly support — and even bring in — refugees, according to conversations with multiple advocates familiar with it. [Emphasis added]
…
The program would mirror Canada’s private refugee resettlement system — which is extremely popular. [Emphasis added]
…
The policy details are still being worked out by the State Department, including how many people are required to sponsor a refugee and how much private resettlement could happen without oversight from refugee agencies. [Emphasis added]
Welcome.us, according to Axios, is providing a gateway for the Biden administration to set up a privatized refugee resettlement operation where corporations can seek out refugees to fill American jobs.
As Breitbart News reported, the Afghan population in the U.S. has exploded in recent years. Before the Afghanistan War began in 2001, just 44,000 Afghans resided in the U.S. By 2019, that total had more than tripled to 133,000.
While the Afghan population in the U.S. has grown significantly, so has the number of Afghans living on welfare and near the poverty line. For instance, more than 65 percent of households headed by Afghan immigrants use at least one major form of welfare.
Likewise, the number of Afghan immigrant households that live in or near the U.S. poverty line is close to 51 percent. This is significantly higher than that of households headed by native-born Americans, where about 27 percent live in or near poverty.
Over the last 20 years, nearly a million refugees have been resettled in the nation — more than double that of residents living in Miami, Florida, and it would be the equivalent of annually adding the population of Pensacola, Florida.
Refugee resettlement costs American taxpayers nearly $9 billion every five years, according to research, and each refugee costs taxpayers about $133,000 over the course of their lifetime. Within five years, an estimated 16 percent of all refugees admitted will need housing assistance paid for by taxpayers.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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