“Nearly half of California’s IHSS home care providers are immigrants. They rejoiced when California expanded Medi-Cal to provide lifesaving care to those trapped in our nation’s broken immigration system. They now feel betrayed by the proposed exclusion of roughly 1,500 people—many who provided essential work here—from critical home care, which costs the state far less than institutional care.
“At SEIU 2015, we celebrate our diversity as we care for those in one of the most diverse places on the planet…a planet where the aging of our population is a global crisis second only to climate change. We urgently need to be expanding the IHSS program. This is no time for cuts. As the Governor’s Master Plan for Aging notes, in six short years, one in four Californians will be 60 or older. This is a crisis we can’t afford to ignore…or worse, make even worse.
“This proposed cut is shortsighted. As our recently released co-authored report notes, ‘The failure to invest in aging and disability care ultimately results in increased costs to the state and employers while compromising the health and well-being of care recipients and care workers.’”