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Priorities for the Biden-Harris Administration's
First 100 Days: Economy and Jobs

We cannot open the economy on the backs of brown, black, undocumented, and low-income workers already suffering disproportionately high infection rates and economic hardship without providing adequate compensation, health care, and other supports needed to have healthy workers who can take care of their families and help get the economy back on its feet.

We must guarantee hazard pay and other support for essential workers, including paid family and medical leave, childcare coverage, protections from deportation and other benefits.

Our communities need robust supports for all unemployed workers and their families, regardless of immigration status, and equitable access to aid for Latino small business owners and community-based nonprofits for the duration of the pandemic-related economic downturn.

Communities like ours, that have already been marginalized by structural barriers to equal opportunities and have low levels of wealth, are particularly vulnerable during all emergencies, whether natural disasters, economic downturns, or a health pandemic like the one caused by COVID-19. In order to respond to the crisis being faced by Latinos due to COVID-19, as well as to address other issues negatively impacting Hispanic and immigrant communities across the country, we urge the Biden-Harris administration to implement the following policies as soon as possible.


Primeros 100 Actions:

  • Do not push to open the economy on the backs of low-wage Latino, Black, and immigrant workers without adequate safety protections, compensation, and worker supports, including access to healthcare, childcare, and paid family leave so sick workers can afford to stay home, take care of their families, and minimize virus spread. Provide protections from deportation for essential workers.

  • Strengthen the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OHSA) protections for all essential workers by mandating that OSHA issue an Emergency Temporary Standard immediately to protect all high-risk workers from exposure to COVID-19 and enact strong worker protections and employee standards necessary to safely reopen our economy, (especially if liability protections are ever passed).

  • Extend and appropriate additional robust funding for the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC), Pandemic Extended Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, and 100 percent of the federal financing of regular-law Extended Benefits (EB).

  • Provide the financial assistance needed to stabilize the childcare sector, ensure childcare providers are able to care for our nation’s children during this pandemic, and provide parents and employers the needed certainty that safe, affordable child care will continue to be available for families who are currently working, especially given the high proportion of Latino and Latina essential workers.
  • Ensure the well-being of farmworkers by including provisions of the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, in any COVID-relief package directing financial assistance to employers to provide job security, pandemic premium pay, sick pay, family leave, carry out CDC recommendations, offer targeted nutrition assistance to farmworker communities, expand the eligibility for childcare programs and additional funding and flexibility for the Migrant and Seasonal Head Start program, and provide additional support for community health centers, particularly in rural and agricultural communities.

  • Grant the right of naturalization, including retroactively, to all farmworkers and other essential workers working in the United States during the COVID-19 crisis and provide employers immunity from adverse action for employing those essential workers, if they were undocumented.

  • Incorporate in any COVID-19 Relief Bill, provisions in the Paycheck Fairness Act, guaranteed paid sick and family leave, defending workers’ ability to join unions, and extending worker protections currently denied to farmworkers, caregivers, domestic workers, and day-laborers.

  • Provide targeted aid to local, community-based nonprofits that work in, and whose staff and leadership are representative of, the highly impacted communities they serve to fill health, financial, educational, nutritional and other social service gaps at the local level.

  • Authorize additional set-asides of PPP funding for community-based lenders like Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and minority depository institutions (MDIs) best positioned to deliver relief to our communities and to stabilize minority-owned small businesses and nonprofits.

  • Direct the Small Business Administration and the U.S. Treasury Dept. to collect demographic data disaggregated by the race, ethnicity, and geographic region of the approved applicants to analyze inequities experienced during the PPP process and direct agencies to implement equitable small business relief moving forward and recommend retroactive remedies if at all possible.

Recommended Executive Orders or Actions

  • Automatically extend Employment Authorization Documents (EAD) and underlying status of work-authorized immigrants, including for DACA and TPS holders for at least the original time period granted to the individual.


Read the full letter outlining our priorities for Latino and immigrant communities for the Biden-Harris Administration’s First 100 Days.