For the past year, the number of households on public assistance in New York City has been quietly climbing up. The family assistance caseload has remained nearly the same, while the number of "safety net assistance" cases rose eight percent in the year ending in April 2004. Safety net assistance provides benefits, at an even lower level than family assistance, to single adults and to families who have used up their five-year lifetime limit on federal assistance. Unlike family assistance, which is partly paid for by federal funds, safety net assistance comes only from the city and state budgets. This caseload has gone up in 11 of the past 12 months, suggesting that economic recovery has not reached the neediest New Yorkers, and that the federal government is shifting more of the burden of continuing poverty onto state and city taxpayers.
A promising idea will not become reality
The commissioner of the city agency that administers welfare, Verna Eggleston of the Human Resources Administration, briefly considered giving welfare recipients a shot at entry-level jobs with city agencies and contractors who do business with the city. For those recipients already working at city agencies in return for their benefit checks, this would have opened the door to permanent jobs with real salaries, paid vacation and sick time, and strong union representation.
Days after the possible jobs program was announced, the mayor revealed that it was only a "hypothetical" option, because city agencies are under a hiring freeze in anticipation of a large budget deficit in 2006. At present, only the city's Department of Parks and Recreation hires welfare recipients for entry-level jobs.
New York City lost 6,500 public-sector jobs in the year ending in April 2004, according to the state Department of Labor. Because private-sector jobs were added, the city had an overall increase of 12,600 jobs in that time. But in a city with over 200,000 households on public assistance, many more new jobs are needed to absorb recipients who hope to become self-supporting.
Washington may offer a bonus to job hunters who find work
The House of Representatives has passed a bill that would give about 15,000 unemployed Americans "Personal Reemployment Accounts" of up to $3,000. If the bill passes the Senate as well, the president will sign it into law.
The money could be used for job training, computer classes, career counseling, skills assessment, relocation services, child care, transportation or housing assistance. Those who found a job in 13 weeks or less, and held it for six months, could keep any part of the $3,000 that they hadn't used for job hunting.
The accounts would be targeted to people expected to use up their unemployment benefits: high school dropouts, workers laid off from declining industries, and those living in areas (such as New York City) that have high rates of unemployment. Unfortunately, these are the same job seekers who could benefit most from training and education.
With a $3,000 bonus dangled in front of them, they are likely to grab at the first job to come along, rather than finish a training program leading to a more secure, better-paying job. Each person who accepted an account would also sign away his or her right to up to $10,000 worth of free employment-related services offered under the Workforce Investment Act. These services are receiving so little publicity that many unemployed workers have no idea they could use them.
Critics of Personal Reemployment Accounts see them as a distraction from Washington's failure to extend unemployment benefits beyond the basic 26 weeks. In New York State, most unemployed workers don't get even those benefits. The state discriminates against temporary, seasonal, and newly hired workers by usually excluding the last three to six months of earnings when deciding whether an applicant has worked long enough to qualify for unemployment insurance. Many laid-off employees do not realize they are eligible for benefits, or know how to apply for them. Written materials and services are only in offered in English and Spanish, even though a large portion of New York City's labor force is fluent only in a language other than these two.
Who benefits from unemployment insurance?
Inequality among wage earners persists even after they lose their jobs. A survey of unemployed New Yorkers found that those who earned high salaries before being laid off were twice as likely to receive unemployment benefits as those who earned low salaries. [See Recession and 9/11: Economic Hardship and the Failure of the Safety Net for Unemployed Workers in New York City (In PDF Format)] White workers were the most likely to get benefits, followed closely by Asians, then by African-Americans, with Latinos least likely to get benefits.
These differences disappeared among union members, who are actively informed about their right to benefits, and who are helped through the application process by union advocates. The differences also melted away during one four-month period within the two years covered by the study. From September through December in 2001, immediately after the World Trade Center disaster, there was little variation in the likelihood that an unemployed worker would get benefits based on language, race or ethnicity. In fact, members of the sample were 24 percent more likely to receive benefits if they lost their jobs during those months, thanks to the blitz of publicity about all forms of assistance at that time.
Most people would rather be earning an adequate salary than collecting a pittance in unemployment benefits or public assistance. If a job is too much to expect, most would welcome a chance to learn skills that could help them climb out of poverty. But if we cannot guarantee jobs or training to everyone, the least we can do is give everyone the same chance to get those benefits.
Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, is a freelance writer and consultant to nonprofits.
After almost a year of job searching in New York, David Chim has given up and is ready to move back to his native Singapore.
With a master’s degree in International Relations from the University of Chicago and some experience as an auditor at a big accounting firm in his native Singapore, Chim has not been able to find a job since his graduation last year. In the midst one of the country’s worst recessions, Chim has another dilemma – as a foreigner, he needs a work permit, which is also known as the H-1B visa.
The H-1B visa program, designed to allow American companies to hire foreign professionals on a temporary basis, has long been a popular way for international students to obtain legal right to work in the United States after graduation. Employers have to prove that they cannot find American workers with the same or similar skills, and are required to provide prevailing salaries for the foreign nationals they hire. But less and less employers are willing to do it.
“I was disappointed,” said Chim, joining tens of thousands of foreign graduates from American universities who have to leave or find alternatives after their one-year Optional Practical Training expires. “I was hoping to gain some overseas work experience…I know it doesn’t matter to big firms if they have to sponsor, but for small and medium firms, maybe it is an issue.”
The Optional Practical Training is a one-year program for international students to work in the United States after their graduation during which they must find a H-1B sponsor if they intend to continue working afterwards.
The H-1B, classified as a non-immigrant visa, is approved in an increment of three years with a possible extension for a total of six years. It has to be petitioned by a perspective employer and becomes invalid when the employment is terminated. According to the 1990 Immigration Act, the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USBCIS) can issue 65,000 H-1B visas every year. In 2004, the cap was reached in mid February, only four and half months into the fiscal year, which ends in September.
“Although it was harsh on me, I still think it is a fair system,” Chim said. “I can understand that from an American point of view, their citizens come first.”
Jeffrey Lu, who is getting his MBA from Baruch College this month, shares Chim’s pain. He had been to several job fairs and interviews and found that many companies do not sponsor foreigners.
“Many big companies such as Met Life, New York Life, and HSBC, made it clear that they do not sponsor work visas,” Lu said. “I am very disappointed because they rejected me before they even get to know me.”
“The United States prides itself as a nation committed to diversity and multi-culturalism,“ Lu added. “There shouldn’t be so many restrictions.”
Frustrated but undeterred, Lu, a native of Taiwan and an aspiring financial analyst, chose to settle for a job that pays way below his qualifications. He accepted an accountant position at a branch office of a Taiwan-based company in New Jersey that has agreed to sponsor him for an H-1B.
“It’s hard to say no because I don’t know if this kind of opportunity will come again,” Lu said.
Lu is not the only one who put his dream aside for an H-1B. Fernanda Marmo, a teacher at an adult school in Flushing, Queens, said she missed some good opportunities because of her status.
“I would like to teach children in a public school,” said Marmo, who comes from Sao Paolo, Brazil and holds a master’s degree in TESOL from Long Island University. “But all public schools require certification, and I can’t even take the state exams because I don’t have a green card.” According to New York Education Law, one has to be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident to qualify for a Permanent or Professional NYS Teaching Certificate, which is required for public school teachers.
Currently with six more months on her OPT, Marmo said her employer is going to sponsor her but she is still worried that USBCIS might reject her application.
“You never know,” Marmo said. “They can always reject you.”
Despite the increasing restrictions and reluctance from employers to sponsor foreign workers, critics of the H-1B program said it’s time to cut back or abolish it, adding that as more companies are taking jobs overseas, known as outsourcing, even the jobs that stay here are not for Americans, particularly in professions such as the IT industry.
“The biggest misconception is that employers must first attempt to fill positions with American workers,” wrote Kim Berry, president of the Programmers Guild, a Web-based advocacy group, in an online article. “This is false. Under current law, an employer can fill dozens of openings H-1B programmers without advertising the position or even considering U.S. programmers for the positions.”
But some see it as a business decision and fair competition.
John Yu, an American citizen who works at the IT department at AIG in New York, said he does feel a little threatened by foreign programmers but it’s all fair game.
“This is a business world,” Yu said. “It’s free competition and employers should be able to hire whoever they think are good workers and at the same time good deals to their business.”
A native of Taipei, Taiwan, Larry Tung is a frequent contributor to the Citizen.
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It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least among Republicans, that a single mother on public assistance must be in want of a husband. To that end, the President’s Healthy Marriage Initiative is built into the welfare reauthorization bill passed by the House of Representatives in the fall of 2003, and its Senate counterpart, stalled by a Democratic filibuster in April 2004.
Federal law already allows states to use public assistance funds to promote marriage, an option few have chosen. The only step New York State has taken toward marriage promotion is to allow two-parent families to receive public assistance even if one of them works full-time, as long as their income is low enough.
Wade Horn, the nation’s Assistant Secretary for Children and Families, leads the effort to channel roughly $300 million a year into marriage promotion programs, and make them a mandatory part of every state’s welfare program. The Healthy Marriage Initiative suggests measures such as cash bonuses for welfare recipients who marry, and penalties for those who do not take part in marriage promotion activities.
Horn has equated opposition to this policy to saying, “We want to make sure low-income couples don’t have the same access that higher income couples have to a service that we know can help them build strong and healthy marriages.”
The Local Marriage Promotion Market
New York City differs from the rest of the United States in two ways crucial to the goals of marriage promotion programs. There are more women in situations that make them targets of such programs, and there are fewer men for them to marry.
The “traditional family” of a married mother and father, living with their own children, makes up only 18 percent of NYC households, compared to 24 percent of households nationwide. In the country as a whole, fewer than one in four families with children are headed by a single woman: in New York City, 36 percent of families with children have this structure. While one in three single American mothers and their children live in poverty, nearly one in two (44 percent) of New York’s single mothers and their children are poor.
What these numbers mean is that nine percent of families with children in New York City are impoverished and headed by single women, and thus candidates for marriage promotion programs. This is more than twice the rate in the nation as a whole.
Who is available for these women to marry? They need husbands who have jobs, or marriage will only dig them deeper into poverty. But in March 2004, the unemployment rate in New York City was still considerably higher, at 7.9 percent, than the 5.7 percent rate nationwide. The city has a disproportionate share of former inmates of prisons and mental institutions, and of men who are HIV-positive, most of whom have difficulty finding and keeping jobs. It is also a center of gay culture, which means that gay men and women are less inclined than they might be elsewhere to marry a member of the opposite sex to hide their sexual identity (and needless to say, the Bush administration is not spending money to promote gay marriage; indeed it is promoting a ban on gay marriage) Finally, at a time when women of color make up two-thirds of the city’s female population, only half of African-American men have jobs.!
Which Comes First, A Job Or A Wedding?
Researchers agree that well-adjusted children are most likely to be found in stable homes, living with a biological father and mother who are married to each other. What is more controversial is whether government could -- or should --- steer more parents into this living arrangement.
The first argument against marriage promotion is that it may not be effective. Two-parent households are richer than single-parent households, but this does not mean that getting married will increase a couple’s income. The statistics could also be attributed to the fact that the same qualities that make a parent employable also make him or her an attractive marriage partner.
A nationwide study of childbearing by unwed mothers found that single fathers were twice as likely as married ones to have a disability that made it difficult to work, and several times more likely to abuse drugs or alcohol. Among couples interviewed for the study in New York City, a third of the fathers had not worked in the past year. The interviews took place in 2000, when the economy was strong and unemployment was relatively low. ( See The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, Baseline City Report: New York City [in pdf format])
Most marriage education programs have been tested on middle-class couples, and even with them, the results are not clear. And there has been no research comparing marriage promotion to programs that improved parents’ ability to earn a living. Much of the poverty of families headed by a single mother is due to lack of education and good jobs. Among children whose single mothers have full-time jobs and college degrees, only one percent are poor.
"Happy Families Are All Alike; Every Unhappy Family Is Unhappy In Its Own Way."
Even if research showed that the majority of children benefit from marriage promotion programs, they might still be inadvisable, if a small minority of parents and/or children were severely harmed by them. Domestic violence is at least twice as common among women on welfare as among the general public, with most estimates as high as 60 percent. Yet only one out of at least ten women on public assistance tells her welfare caseworker that she is being abused. This indicates that states might not be able to identify women in abusive situations, and might instead steer them into marriage with their abusers.
Some states are considering making it harder for people to divorce, as a way of encouraging marriages to last. This could be dangerous, in light of a study that compared changes in the rates of suicide, homicide, and domestic violence between states that liberalized their divorce laws and states that did not. Over a thirty-year period, researchers found women were less likely to kill themselves, and to be killed by their partners, in states that liberalized their divorce laws. No similar pattern was seen for men. Reports of domestic violence by both men and women were also lower in states allowing unilateral divorce. [Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law: Divorce Laws and Family Distress (in PDF format)]
In New York City, divorces are almost 50 percent more likely to happen in the first five years of marriage than in the rest of the state. This may explain why only a third of city divorces involve couples with children, compared to more than half of the divorces elsewhere in the state. If a couple is going to get divorced, it is preferable that they do so before having children rather than after. It would be a sad paradox if marriage counseling encouraged incompatible couples either to have children earlier in their marriages, or to stay together longer, resulting in more divorces taking place after children were born.
An Old-Fashioned Stigma Returns?
Supporters of marriage promotion programs include groups that encourage churchgoing, traditional women’s roles, and responsible fatherhood, and oppose divorce and gay marriage. Many of these groups use the term “illegitimate” to describe children born out of wedlock. A particularly cruel result of government emphasis on marriage for parents could be a belief among children of unwed parents that they are not legitimate human beings.
Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, is a freelance writer and consultant to nonprofits.