Johnson County should fund excluded workers, not doubt their hardships

For most residents of Johnson County, undocumented workers might as well be invisible, since, even though migrant workers overwhelmingly perform all the thankless, low-paid tasks that make the local economy run, very little assistance has been forthcoming to help them throughout the pandemic. Sometimes, when their situation does come to light, they are met with disbelief and scorn.

This disbelief recently manifested in Johnson County Supervisor Rod Sullivan’s response on social media to Ninoska Campos, a member of the Fund Excluded Workers coalition, and her story of hardship during the pandemic, as reported by the Press-Citizen.

“Parts of this story don’t add up … How does she work at the Marriott without a Social Security number?” Sullivan wrote on Twitter. He is, perhaps, unaware that the hospitality industry has one of the highest concentrations of undocumented workers.

However, this is the kind of thing one might expect someone who has worked in local government for nearly 20 years to know. It’s a testament to how marginalized migrant workers are that something as basic as this could be completely unknown to the powers that be.

In response to Sullivan’s statements, Campos has filed a complaint against him with the Iowa City Human Rights Commission, because Sullivan is not just any resident but someone with a direct say in how pandemic aid is distributed. It is an open question as to whether attitudes like his in county government have created unnecessary hurdles for migrant workers to seek aid.

There are structural impediments as well. A statement from the Catholic Worker House notes, “[t]he burdensome red tape restricting equal access to the city and county’s general assistance programs is also a form of unfair discrimination against excluded workers who ... do not always have written documents proving income, expenses, financial losses, and other mandated but unnecessary requirements.”

Bureaucrats might believe these rules make sure aid goes to where it is needed, but in practice these barriers to access often have the negative side effect of keeping those who would otherwise qualify from seeking aid. If Supervisor Sullivan were so concerned with Campos’s welfare, he’d be working to eliminate barriers to financial assistance, not insinuating that people are lying.

Migrant workers have shouldered the burden of the pandemic far more than most. Limited in terms of the types of work they can perform, most of them were unable to work from home in the way white collar professionals in the county were able to do. In fact, they had to do the kinds of work that made people’s escape to their homes possible in the first place, meaning most migrant workers were at greater risk of exposure to COVID at a time when no vaccines were available. They were also not eligible for the several rounds of direct cash stimulus most Americans received.

With the infusion of tens of millions of federal dollars from the America Rescue Plan Act into city and county governments, Iowa City and Johnson County have the opportunity to provide excluded workers the direct cash assistance they need more than most. It is a worrisome sign, then, that some among our local officials simply don’t believe the truth of their plight.

Nicholas Theisen writes about Iowa City government at twitter.com/city_of_iowa