In summary
Gov. Newsom again vetoes a bill to let undocumented immigrants apply for unemployment benefits. He earlier vetoed measures to allow them to apply for homeowner aid, and for undocumented students to work on campus. Political analysts say he’s playing it safe on a hot-button issue.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced today he vetoed a bill directing the state to explore extending unemployment benefits to undocumented workers, dashing the hopes of advocates who have campaigned since the COVID pandemic for the expansion.
The veto of Senate Bill 227 marks the second time he blocked the idea — and the third time this month he’s denied opening state programs to undocumented immigrants.
Last weekend Newsom killed a bill opening up campus jobs to undocumented students in the University of California and California State University systems, citing legal concerns. And earlier this month he vetoed an expansion to let undocumented Californians apply for state assistance for first-time homebuyers, a program that was out of money.
In his veto message on the unemployment bill, Newsom wrote that it “sets impractical timelines, has operational issues, and requires funding that was not included in the budget.”
The vetoes come amid increasingly hostile rhetoric on immigration during the presidential election.
After Republican lawmakers slammed the home-buying bill during the session, it went viral on conservative media outlets and drew the attention of billionaire Elon Musk, who wrote on his social media platform X that the state was incentivizing immigration with the promise of state benefits. Musk is backing former President Donald Trump, who has made illegal immigration his signature issue.
Newsom wrote that the campus jobs bill was too risky given federal law prohibits hiring undocumented immigrants. His veto message suggested advocates seek legal cover from the courts before pushing the legislation.
Ahilan Arulanantham, a UCLA law professor and one of the architects of a novel theory arguing why the UC is allowed to legally hire undocumented students, said that he “couldn’t remember the last time I had seen a major Democrat with a national profile block some opportunity for undocumented youth.”
Mike Madrid, a GOP consultant, called vetoing such bills a safe political move for Newsom when Democrats nationally are perceived as being weak on border security. Vice President Kamala Harris’ rightward tilt on immigration has helped to narrow that gap in swing-state polls, Madrid said, but he described any bills related to immigration as too volatile for Newsom to touch.
“To have a governor of California signing something that would not be popular in those states on an issue area where she has just begun to close the gap, would be very politically problematic,” he said. “My suspicion is the biggest consideration is, ‘Could this affect the race for White House?’”
Newsom’s office declined to comment. “The veto messages speak for themselves,” spokesperson Brandon Richards said earlier this week.
But in his veto message, the governor also sought to head off criticism, pointing out in his letter vetoing the unemployment bill that the state “has taken important steps to advance inclusion and equity for undocumented workers and mixed-status families who contribute significantly to California’s economy and local communities.”
Not all political observers are convinced. Andrew Acosta, a Democratic strategist, said there were other “problems” with the bills, such as costs, and said the GOP already uses California to attack Democrats on immigration.
“Ninety percent of what happens in the state of California is tied to the budget,” he said.
“If Donald Trump wants to make California an issue, he’s got plenty of fodder. These three bills aren’t going to make or break the campaign.”
Unemployment insurance was one of the last expansions that advocates had hoped California would undertake during a series of flush budget years when the state committed billions of dollars toward extending major safety-net programs to undocumented residents.
The state is home to more than 1.8 million undocumented immigrants, who have become eligible for drivers’ licenses, the earned income tax credit and, recently, Medi-Cal. During the pandemic, the state created a disaster relief program for immigrants and lawmakers allowed immigrants to receive some state stimulus checks.
But the state’s budget deficit has pumped the brakes. A planned expansion of the state’s food assistance benefits to immigrants older than 55 was scheduled for next year, but will be delayed to 2027.
Yeni Linares, an undocumented worker in Fontana who campaigned for the unemployment expansion, said when her work dried up during the pandemic, there was no lifeline.
Her work cleaning houses and office buildings, she said, shrunk from five to three days a week — and she was only making $80 a day. Her family lost their car and their apartment, she said, so they squeezed into a relative’s house, where four families lived under one roof. Amidst the move, she never got any checks.
“The government, it left me completely abandoned,” the 47-year-old, who has been a domestic worker for 19 years, said in Spanish. “It’s not easy for an undocumented family to recover from such a huge impact. For us, the pandemic never ended.”
Though the proposal was born out of the pandemic, advocates say it can also help as climate change exacerbates job instability for vulnerable workers. Farmworkers are losing days of work during storms and periods of extreme heat, and domestic workers during wildfires. Linares said she’s lost work for as long as two weeks at a time this year when wildfires have swept through the mountains north of San Bernardino where she cleans houses.
The bill was activists’ second try getting Newsom’s approval for the unemployment benefits.
He vetoed a similar bill in 2022, saying that there wasn’t money for the program. The unemployment insurance system is funded by state and federal taxes on employers; since the pandemic, California’s system has been $20 billion in debt. Because of federal restrictions, state dollars would likely be needed to fund a similar program for immigrants.
Advocates tried again this year. The bill, originally intended to give undocumented workers who lose their jobs as much as $300 a week in benefits for as long as 20 weeks, was watered down at the end of the legislative session to instead direct the Employment Development Department to study the issue, and figure out how to expand the program — including finding a funding source.
Bill author Sen. María Elena Durazo, a Los Angeles Democrat, said in August she hoped that could prompt the department to consider undocumented workers as it undertakes a technological overhaul of the unemployment system.
Prior to the veto, Linares slammed Newsom for dragging out his decision and called the political rhetoric around immigration an “injustice.”
“We’re tired of it,” she said. “We’re not asking for anything for free. We see it as something we’ve earned with our work.”
CalMatters’ higher education reporter Mikhail Zinshteyn contributed to this story.