(Beth LaBerge/KQED)
One morning in March, an undocumented farmworker on the Central Coast got ready to make a phone call she’d made dozens of times before, to a state agency where a human rarely answered.
It had been three months since she’d applied for the partial wage replacement most California workers are eligible for — regardless of immigration status — when they are disabled due to pregnancy or other health reasons.
But Reina, who at the time was six months pregnant, had not yet received a reply from the Employment Development Department on her claim, let alone the money she had counted on to pay rent. The 33-year-old said she was so anxious that she sometimes got headaches and couldn’t stomach food. (KQED is not using Reina’s full name because of her immigration status.)
“It was so difficult for me and my family,” she said in Spanish, adding that the agency had paid her past State Disability Insurance benefits with little delay when she had her three older sons, now ages 2 to 10. “I never imagined it would take so long this time around.”
That same month, about 300 miles away in Santa Clarita, a frustrated Amanda Butler got in the car with her 2-week-old infant, 4-year-old son and husband. He drove the family nearly an hour to a crowded EDD office in downtown Los Angeles. Like Reina, Butler had tried calling the agency but couldn’t reach a person to explain why she hadn’t received her biweekly SDI payments yet.
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