Recently, I witnessed an ICE arrest in Glen Cove on Long Island. Two Hispanic men were seated on a curb in a parking lot. The younger of the two was taken away by armed men, some in fatigues, some with the lower portions of their faces masked, all wearing bullet proof vests. One of the masked officers wore a Yankees hat.
At age ten or eleven, I read The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank’s diary, and was extremely disturbed by the force used against helpless Jewish people. The movie was even more harrowing. The blaring of Nazi sirens as they came for the defenseless became part of my nightmares.
As I watched a freshly shaved, well-dressed man looking for work get arrested for being an immigrant, those feelings came back.
Immigrants are, and always have been, the backbones and workhorses of our nation. For decades many of America’s best doctors and scientists have been immigrants. They wanted to come here for the opportunity to learn, unfettered by poverty or autocratic governments, at the best universities and hospitals. And many immigrants that came to our country to enhance opportunities for them and their families to succeed have become people who people with disabilities depend on to succeed, too.
To reside successfully in the community, many people with disabilities need homecare. The services of personal care attendants are provided mostly by immigrants, mostly immigrant women. As baby boomers age and live longer than any generation before them, many will depend on immigrants for care. The relationships developed between some workers and their clients with disabilities can last lifetimes.
There are several ways that personal care attendants can be employed. Immigrant home care workers either have Social Security numbers or they don’t. If they don’t, they are providing personal care services in an underground economy. Since Medicare does not pay for personal care services, elderly Medicare recipients pay these personal care attendants with cash. All over the U.S., immigrants, many of whom are undocumented, provide essential care this way.
The largest insurer of personal care services is Medicaid. Care is delivered through agencies whose workers must be documented and have Social Security numbers. There is always a worker shortage, and new anti-immigrant policies will absolutely impact this further.
Personal care workers will be deported. Potential workers will be dissuaded from coming to America. Boomers will suffer as they become more dependent on a dwindling population of workers and less able to provide their own care.
And, oh yes, most states in America have waiting lists of people with disabilities who want to reside in the community but need personal care to stay out of nursing homes and stay alive. Those dependent on personal care attendants will lose their independence and ability to thrive.
Sounds like disability dystopia because it will be.
Why doesn’t the current administration try something else? Why not improve the quality of everyone’s lives—immigrants, baby boomers, and people with disabilities—and carve out ways to stay in our country for immigrants providing personal care services? Cruelty, breaking up families, and denying due process seems to be the ends not justifying the means in this rush to deport. We need a well-reasoned, understandable immigration policy and we need homecare workers. Fix this mess, elected officials, please.
Opinions expressed are solely those of the writer(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Able News at The Viscardi Center and/or The Viscardi Center.