Immigration Reforms May Hurt the Disabled : Law Reduces Supply of Personal Attendants

Thousands of elderly and disabled people may be unintended victims of immigration reform because the illegal immigrants they depend upon as personal attendants are unemployable under the new law, according to the disabled and their advocates.

Lists of applicants for such jobs at some centers for the disabled have already declined and are expected to drop further as agencies begin to turn away illegal immigrants who apply for the low-paying jobs, recruiters say.

“Our registry of attendant applicants is already down by half from last year, and a lot of disabled people are scared to death of what will happen next,” said James McGee at the Westside Center for Independent Living in Torrance. His list, he said, is down from 60 to 25 people.

Residency Proof

“The farmers have been able to legalize their workers because of this supposed emergency need for them, while the disabled, especially the severely disabled, need their providers just to stay alive and can’t legally hire them,” he said.

The new immigration law requires every employer, including those who have even one person working regularly in their homes, to ask for proof of legal residency from employees. This section of the law became effective July 1. The law also provides for the legalization of farm workers.

The effect on the disabled is an example of unforeseen results of the immigration legislation.

“Now many of us are in the position of violating the law when we’re just trying to survive,” said Linda Knipps, 35, a quadriplegic who has been active in disabled issues in Los Angeles.

Knipps and other disabled people said they wrote to members of Congress asking for an exemption before the immigration law was passed but received no reply.

County and state officials estimated in interviews that at most 5% to 10% of attendants to the disabled are illegal immigrants. These officials say they have yet to see any shortage of attendants.

Numbers Disputed

“We’ve had inquiries from groups concerned about problems,” said Rene Camou, chief of the county’s Medical and Special Programs Planning Division. “But we haven’t seen them. I’d be very surprised if we had hundreds and hundreds of illegal alien attendants out there.”

The disabled and their advocates contend, however, that county officials are out of touch and that there are more illegal immigrant attendants than the government recognizes. Some organizations for the disabled have traditionally offered Spanish classes as a “survival skill” because so many employ Latino immigrants as attendants.

Although some local centers for the disabled say they have yet to see a drop in attendants who will do day work, most said their long-standing problems in finding live-in attendants for the severely disabled have multiplied. There are about 6,000 severely disabled people in Los Angeles County. Some sources estimate that 40% to 80% of these people have illegal immigrant attendants.

“Even if only 20,000 or 30,000 disabled people in the country are affected by this law, that is a huge problem,” said Judy Heumann of the World Institute on Disability in the Bay Area, which recently conducted a nationwide survey of the disabled.

About 130,000 disabled people statewide receive aid from the state-funded In Home Supportive Services program for low-income people. About 54,500 live in Los Angeles. Many more disabled people hire attendants without government aid.

In New York, Allen Rosen, director of Homecare Services for Independent Living, said the supply of Caribbean immigrants who have long taken such jobs is “drying up.”

“When we ask for documentation, they walk out,” he said. “And the word has gotten around that we check for IDs, so fewer people are coming are in. It’s gotten to be a real crisis.”

In interviews, a dozen young and old disabled people expressed poignant fears about the new law, ranging from nightmares about being trapped at home alone without someone to feed them to being thrown back into institutions because they cannot afford legal attendants. Some of their fears are old anxieties rekindled by the law, some are new.

“We worry all the time about what would happen if the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) picked up our girl,” said one frail, elderly Sherman Oaks woman whose husband is confined to a wheelchair. “For starters, my husband wouldn’t be able to get out of bed even to go to the bathroom. I’d like to put the immigration official in his place and see how he likes it.”

Prefers Immigrants

One young South Bay woman who has no use of her arms said she will continue to hire Latin American women, legal or illegal, because three young American women she hired proved to be homosexuals, one of whom molested her in the shower.

“I know I just had a string of bad luck with Americans,” she said. “But I’ve had really good luck with illegals. They stay longer and they just seem to be more compassionate. They have a respect for the disabled that American girls don’t. The one I have now really feels like my own arms. It’s hard to explain to someone how important that is.”

One quadriplegic, who agreed to be identified only as “Ruth,” said some American attendants she had hired had turned out to be drug addicts and thieves. “One stole my van,” she said, adding: “I require not only cooking and hairbrushing, but personal care like cleaning a catheter. Trustworthy Americans just don’t want to do that work for what we can pay.”

Marilyn Holle, an attorney with Protection and Advocacy in Los Angeles, said the new law at its worst could inadvertently undo much of the progress California has made in encouraging the disabled to live independently.

“A significant section of these people,” she said, “would rather risk death than institutionalization.”

The underlying problem is the low wages that most disabled people can afford to pay their attendants. The state gives In Home Supportive Services recipients a maximum of $1,025 a month. That covers about nine hours’ care a day at $3.72 an hour.

‘No Real Benefits’

“Who wants to do personal care like changing the linen of incontinent people a couple hours a day three days a week, and take the bus, all for $3.72 an hour or less with no real benefits?” asked Phillip Fraijo, an outreach worker for attendant services at Southern California Rehabilitation Services in Downey. “Immigrants, that’s who.”

Because in-home workers are not covered by state minimum wage laws, and the severely disabled need more care than than the state program pays, attendants often work long hours off the books. They get workers’ compensation, Social Security and disability but no health insurance, paid vacation, pension or overtime.

Typical of such live-in attendants is Maria, a young Mexican woman who moved to the United States illegally a year ago.

Three months ago, she took a job caring for a paralyzed Los Angeles-area woman who is authorized for about 260 hours of attendant care a month. The woman receives about $960 a month from the state to pay Maria.

On the books, Maria works nine hours on weekdays only.

But, in reality, Maria actually works more than 14 hours daily--from 7:30 a.m. until 10 p.m.--with three days off every two weeks. She administers complete personal care to the wheelchair-bound woman, cleans, washes, cooks and takes care of the woman’s children as well.

$400 Held Back

Of the $960, the woman keeps almost $400 from the check for Maria’s room and board. (That is against state regulations, but the woman says she and her family have difficulty making ends meet.)

For Maria, that boils down to $1.29 an hour.

“I assume Americans either can get more wages or do not like this kind of work,” Maria said. “But I like my job. The people are very nice to me. And it pays more than the $75 a week I could get as a maid.”

Cheryl Pelletier, 38, a Redondo Beach polio survivor who is living on Social Security, said she offers her attendants $4.50 an hour, paying the difference out of her own pocket. Even so, she said, she has now been looking for two months to find a permanent attendant.

“It may be impossible to find dependable help with this new law,” she said.

Richard Daggett, president of the national Polio Survivors Assn., believes that many people simply will ignore the law. “I think most are just going to wind up not complying,” he said. “What are they going to do, put us in jail?”

Immigration service officials have repeatedly said their enforcement priorities will be large employers, like manufacturers, not people who hire one employee.

System of Payment

The disabled fear, however, that the new law could rob them of access to illegal immigrant attendants even indirectly by changing the system many use to pay immigrant attendants who do not have Social Security numbers.

In Home Supportive Services issues such attendants “pseudo” or “dummy” numbers. The system was set up several years ago as an interim measure to give attendants without Social Security numbers time to get them.

“We’ve got someone now with a pseudo number, and we’re on pins and needles over this,” said John Eivers, 45, of Long Beach. He and his wife, who is also disabled, have used illegal immigrants 98% of the time, he said. “It’s hard to find someone you’re comfortable with--let alone if you cut out your biggest supply of attendants, the illegals.”

Bob Barton, chief of the Adult Services Bureau of the state Department of Social Services, said the state has no plans to change the pseudo-number system. “And we don’t have any plans here for INS to look over our files,” he added. He said, however, that the state is developing guidelines on how to comply with the immigration law.

Outreach Lacking

“What we’ll probably do is send instructions to recipients and perhaps do some sort of screening ourselves,” he said. “We’re not anticipating a great problem at this point. I don’t think it’s a question that there aren’t people to do the work but that there isn’t enough good outreach to find them.”

Los Angeles County has a list of about 1,500 people who say they are looking for jobs as attendants to the disabled, county officials say.

Unlike the centers for the disabled, however, the county does no interviews to screen for criminal background, experience, willingness to work odd hours or immigration status. County officials take the position that the disabled people are responsible for verifying immigration status because they are the employers.