SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Nearly half of all undocumented immigrants in California don’t have access to healthy foods or struggle to buy meals, according to a staggering new statewide analysis.
The report, published by Nourish California and the California Immigrant Policy Center on Friday, reveals that 45% of non-citizen residents have limited, uncertain or inconsistent access to food necessary for a healthy life.
Food insecurity is particularly dire among children — about 2 in 3 undocumented children go hungry. And nearly 500,000 undocumented adults live in a household struggling with food insecurity.
“The findings in this brief weren’t necessarily surprising, but they are pretty stark,” said Susan Babey of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, which helped create the report, during a virtual press conference Friday.
The consequences of food instability are far-reaching and devastating, linked to birth defects, oral decay, asthma, mental health issues and more among children. In adults, it’s a major contributor to diseases like hypertension and diabetes. Food insecure people also have higher overall healthcare costs, causing additional financial strain on families.
Food policy experts said poverty is the main force driving food insecurity among non-citizens, which includes refugees and asylees. About 625,000 undocumented adults in California live below the poverty line — about $26,246 for a household of two adults and two children. Non-citizens in California are twice as likely to live in poverty compared to the overall state adult population.
“Fundamentally, I think addressing food insecurity comes down to a question of whether we as a state are willing to commit to everyone having equitable opportunities to be healthy and well,” Babey said.
Currently, all undocumented people are ineligible for CalFresh, the federal food assistance program. Of the roughly 11 million immigrants living in California, about 2.3 million are undocumented, according to the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.
It’s a system that forced Donna Yerat-Rodriguez and her family to regularly skip meals each day. Yerat-Rodriguez and her sister are U.S. citizens, but her mother was undocumented, struggling to secure stable jobs and earn a livable wage.
Yerat-Rodriguez, a fellow with the national advocacy group Poder Latinx, remembers going to school in Southern California with her sister each day on an empty stomach. Once, she and her sister went to a local doughnut shop before class, counting pocket change on the counter to see if they could scrounge up enough to buy a 75-cent doughnut. They couldn’t.
“It was a really shocking moment, realizing as a child that on my mind I was constantly thinking, ‘Will we have enough food on the table? Will we be able to afford to eat today?’ ” Yerat-Rodriguez said during the press conference.
Yerat-Rodriguez’s family was only eligible to receive $200 a month to cover her and her sister — nowhere near enough to get by, she said.
But soon, people like Yerat-Rodriguez’s mother may be eligible for public food assistance.
In January, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed expanding public food assistance programs to undocumented immigrants 55 and older. And last week, the state senate released a budget blueprint directing $284 million to the California Food Assistance Program beginning in 2023-24, expanding access to undocumented immigrants of all ages.
Expanding eligibility alone will not curb food insecurity among undocumented immigrants, which grew during the pandemic as hundreds of thousands of Californians lost their jobs — including nearly 358,000 undocumented workers in summer 2020.
A UCLA study last year found that about 3 in 4 Latinx immigrants surveyed felt they would be prevented from gaining legal U.S. immigration status if they used government benefits — a fear that might scare off those who could be most in need.
But food policy and immigration experts said it’s an important step forward.
“Everyone in California needs food, and the reality is that many Californians experience challenges affording food for themselves and their families,” said Benyamin Chao of the California Immigrant Policy Center during the press conference.
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