Officials say that 92,000 immigrant workers in New York who did not qualify for federal stimulus checks included in the CARES Act and American Rescue Plan have qualified for the full, $15,600 stimulus in the Excluded Workers Fund.
It has only been a couple weeks since the state began accepting applications for the stimulus checks aimed at sending direct aid payments to immigrant workers.
Now, advocacy groups are calling on the state to add more money to the fund. At it’s current pace, it will exhaust the $2.1 billion that the state was going to use from the federal government. Advocates say that New York State should add $1.4 billion to it – to meet the exceptionally strong demand for stimulus payments.
What happened? Why have so many workers qualified for it?
The state expected around 300,000 immigrant workers to qualify for part of the stimulus check. The value was expected to vary by applicant. But, the state has found that nearly all of the 92,000 immigrant workers who applied for the stimulus check qualified for the full value.
That means $15,600 stimulus checks going out to a large number of residents.
In total 223,500 claims have been submitted. That means more than 100,000 still need to be processed.
It’s unclear when those will be fully processed and released. The state says payments are going out as they are processed.
Will all eligible workers receive money even if it runs out?
The short answer is ‘no’. State labor officials say that applications are considered safe, but not guaranteed. They are being prioritized by date of initial submission. That means those immigrant workers who got applications in earliest will get priority in the process.
If the fund that supports the massive stimulus checks runs out – then so will approval. There could be a waitlist created, but it’s unclear how that part would work – or how quickly the state would supplement funding without federal help.
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