Latest news with #NationalDomesticWorkersAlliance
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
In SC, the caregivers may see half of what Medicaid pays for home care. A bill would change that.
Lisa Lee, a home health care worker in Camden, came to the Statehouse on Tuesday, April 1, 2025, to advocate for a bill that would raise wages for herself and other workers. (Photo by Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette) COLUMBIA — For every hour Lisa Lee works caring for people in their homes, her employer receives $25 per hour. In 10 years of work, she has never gotten more than $15 per hour. Lee's employer, like all home health providers in the state, gets funding through Medicaid reimbursements for home care waivers. Under state law, providers have no requirement to pay care workers more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. The portion of the reimbursement that doesn't go to workers is set aside for administrative costs. That often means roughly half of what taxpayers provide for services goes toward bureaucracy instead of the caregiver, and that's not right, said Maria Reyes, South Carolina's organizing director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance. The low wages are causing health care workers to flee the field for higher-paying jobs, at a time when South Carolina's aging population needs more caregivers, not less. To stem the exodus, the state should limit how much providers can take from the workers doing the job, she said. A bill introduced in the Statehouse last week would require providers to pass on at least 70% of their reimbursement rate to care workers. That's $17.50 per hour at the current rate of $25 per hour. Home health workers are tasked with doing whatever a person needs on a daily basis, such as bathing them, giving them medication or helping them move around the house. Beyond that, health workers are often a friend and source of comfort for their clients, Reyes said. 'You're not just washing someone. You're not just feeding someone. You're not just giving meds,' she said. 'You're that person's person while you're there.' In 2023, the median wage for home health care workers in the state was $13.62 per hour, according to PHI, a national nonprofit that promotes care for the elderly and people with disabilities. For a person working 40 hours a week, that would equate to a yearly salary of about $28,300 per year. There have been times when Lee, who lives and works in Camden, has had to choose between asking her boss for an advance to pay for gas or walking to her clients' houses because she couldn't afford to fill up her car's tank, she said. 'I shouldn't have to ask my boss for help,' Lee said, adding she should be able to pay for it herself. Trying to make some more money, she took on more clients. But the more people she cared for, the less time she had to spend with each of them. She can't afford to take sick days or vacation, since her job offered no paid time off, she said. 'These are the sacrifices I make because I love what I do,' said Lee, who declined to name her employer. 'But home health care workers are neglecting their own needs.' Sen. Darrell Jackson, the bill's sponsor, credits a home health care worker with keeping his father alive for an extra several years two decades ago while he was in hospice at home. Knowing his father was getting the care he needed took some stress off Jackson and his family, he said. But with low pay driving people out of the profession and into other work, not everyone gets that chance, said the Hopkins Democrat. That was why he sponsored the bill, which has yet to receive a committee hearing. He's also pushing for a clause in the state budget that has the same effect. 'When you look at their average pay, it is pretty ridiculous,' Jackson said. Families who can't find a home health care worker often have to take on the responsibilities of round-the-clock care themselves, sometimes at great personal sacrifice, said Reyes, who lives in Columbia. Her father qualified for a home health worker under Medicaid in 2022 as his health declined from congestive heart failure, but no local agencies had enough workers to help him, she said. Instead, her niece quit her job and moved from North Carolina, and her brother retired early to take care of him, Reyes said. 'The whole point of us applying for the waiver was for us to get a break, for us to have someone directly for my dad,' Reyes said. 'Unfortunately, we never got the chance.' Her father died while still on a waiting list for a worker. As of last July, nearly 20,000 people were on a waiting list to receive a waiver, according to the state's Medicaid agency. As the state's population ages, the number of people looking for at-home care is expected to grow. In the next decade, the state is projected to need nearly 11,000 more home health care workers than it already has, which is more than any other health care job, according to the state Department of Employment and Workforce. How many people can get services depends on whether the state has the money to reimburse providers for their care. The House's initial spending plan includes $5 million to increase the number of slots available for Home and Community-Based Services waivers, which pay for home health care workers to take care of people. Getting more people the help they need is great, Reyes said. But increasing the number of people eligible for a home health care worker without taking steps to improve pay and conditions for the workers will likely only make the problem worse, she said.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Immigration Advocates Protest Trump's Detention of Jeannette Vizguerra
Undocumented immigrant Jeanette Vizguerra takes sanctuary at the First Baptist Church in Denver, Colorado, on May 5, 2017. Credit - John Moore—Getty Images In 1997, Jeanette Vizguerra left Mexico City for Colorado, where she became a janitor and immigration reform advocate. Twenty years later, she was one of the most influential people in the world. Now, the mother of four and National Domestic Workers Alliance member has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the NDWA told TIME, amid President Donald Trump's politicized deportation crackdown that has appeared to ramp up in recent days. 'We're urgently working on collaborating with partners to demand her immediate release,' National Domestic Workers Alliance media relations director Daniela Perez told TIME on Tuesday. 'Lawless ICE detainments and deportations are attacks on all of our freedoms. We will not allow ICE or leaders who stoke fear and division to terrorize our loved ones and neighbors.' Vizguerra was arrested at a Target in Denver on Monday, Jordan Garcia of the American Friends Service Committee told the Associated Press. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said the arrest of Vizguerra is 'not about safety. This is Putin-style persecution of political dissidents.' Protestors calling for Vizguerra's release gathered outside a detention center in the Aurora suburb, where her family said she is being held. Vizguerra rose to prominence for living in Denver churches for three months in 2017, eventually winning a two-year deportation delay after Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet and former Rep. now Gov. Jared Polis, both Democrats, introduced bills to help her and another Mexican immigrant remain in the country. In one of his first actions of his second term, Trump rescinded a Biden-era policy that protected 'sensitive' areas, including schools, hospitals and churches, from ICE arrests. The Department of Homeland Security then issued a directive, titled 'Enforcement Actions in or Near Protected Areas,' that gave ICE agents unbridled access to these places. Read More: How Schools Are Navigating Trump's Immigration Policies Vizguerra was featured in TIME's TIME100 list in 2017—for which actor, producer, and activist America Ferrera wrote: 'Jeanette moved to the U.S. to be a janitor, working as an outspoken union organizer and building her own company before becoming an advocate for immigration reform—a bold and risky thing for an undocumented immigrant. … The current Administration has scapegoated immigrants, scaring Americans into believing that undocumented people like Jeanette are criminals. She came to this country not to rape, murder or sell drugs, but to create a better life for her family. … This is not a crime. This is the American Dream.' Vizguerra again sought shelter in a church sanctuary in 2019 after her deportation stay was not renewed, before leaving the church grounds in 2020 and attempting to get a U visa, which is sometimes given to victims of crime, according to Garcia. Vizguerra fled Mexico after her husband, who was a bus driver, was held up at gunpoint three times, according to a 2011 documentary about their immigration ordeal. While historically immigration enforcement has prioritized those who threaten national security or public safety, Trump has expanded enforcement priorities during his first and second terms, in keeping with his campaign promise to pursue 'mass deportations.' Vizguerra is the mother of three U.S. citizens and one so-called 'Dreamer,' a recipient of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that provided work permits to and shielded from deportation certain undocumented immigrants who came as children. Trump rescinded DACA during his first term, though President Joe Biden reinstated it. Vizguerra would have been eligible for the similar Obama-era Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) program, which Trump also rescinded during his first term. At the start of his second term, Trump also revoked Biden's immigration enforcement priorities, which included focusing on those with 'serious' criminal records, in favor of a broader effort to crack down on all unauthorized immigrants. John Fabbricatore, a former Denver field office director for ICE, said in a post on X on Tuesday that the Biden Administration prevented him from deporting Vizguerra years earlier. 'She should have been deported in 2009 as well,' Fabbricatore, an outspoken Trump supporter, wrote. 'She is a criminal, hates Trump, and is an open-borders, abolish-ICE advocate. Bye!!!!' Besides entering the country unlawfully, Vizguerra was convicted in 2009 of misdemeanor possession of forged documents, which she said she needed for employment, after which a judge in 2011 issued a deportation order but allowed her to remain in the U.S. under ICE supervision. Vizguerra's lawyers told the AP that ICE is now trying to deport her based on that order, which they say was never valid. 'The only thing that I've done is use false documents to put food on the table of my family,' Vizguerra said through a translator at an address to supporters and media outside a Denver church in 2017. Vizguerra filed a lawsuit in 2019 alleging that ICE 'carried out a yearslong campaign' to deport her without 'valid justification.' She later dropped the lawsuit, according to the AP. As of late Tuesday, ICE and DHS have not publicly confirmed Vizguerra's detention nor commented on new developments related to her case, and neither the agency nor the department immediately responded to TIME's requests for this story. Contact us at letters@
