Disabled Fear Ruling Will Mean Loss of Helpers Who Are Illegals

At 37, Linda Knipps’ life as a quadriplegic revolves around a respirator and ventilation system that accompanies her 24 hours a day providing a steady mixture of saline and medication and pressurized air that Knipps needs to survive.

Also at her side, virtually around the clock, is a young El Salvadoran named Ana Maria, a home-care worker who not only assists Knipps in her use and maintenance of the respirator but in her day-to-day living.

Ana feeds, bathes, dresses and grooms Knipps in the two-bedroom apartment in Torrance that they share five days a week. She also does the grocery shopping, laundry and housecleaning. When Knipps leaves home in her motorized wheelchair, Ana is with her, as she has been for the last five years.

“Without her I would be in a medical institution or worse,” said Knipps who suffers from a degenerative, neuromuscular disease. “Other severely disabled persons feel the same way about their home-care workers. That’s why we’re so worried about losing them.”

Among Los Angeles County’s severely disabled, the fear of losing their home-care workers was intensified by what they perceive as a crackdown on undocumented workers in the in-home support services program, which is funded by the state and administered by the county.

While Ana has applied for legal status, Knipps would not disclose Ana’s last name because of the risks that she could still be deported in the interim--a concern that she said other home-care workers and their employers share.

“I have gotten a lot of phone calls from people all over the county who are frightened about this,” said Knipps, who has been active in issues concerning the disabled in Los Angeles. “People’s lives are going to be totally uprooted.”

The disabled who rely on undocumented workers as attendants were reluctant to openly discuss the issue for fear of jeopardizing their home-care workers and themselves. But Nora Quinn, legal director of the Western Center for the Handicapped at Loyola Law School, echoed their concerns.

“This is a life-and-death situation for many of these people,” Quinn said. “They are the most difficult to care for, and they fear they are going to be cut off from their home-care providers.”

The core of their concern is a recent decision by state and county officials that will require valid Social Security cards from home-care workers after the first of the year, a move that could disqualify illegal aliens who assist the severely disabled.

Although county officials claim that about half of the home-care workers are friends and relatives of participants in the state-funded program, the severely disabled say they are forced to rely on undocumented workers who are willing to work the demanding hours at the $4.25-an-hour minimum wage.

Since many of those immigrants were without Social Security numbers, the state and county adopted the practice of providing “pseudo” or “invalid” numbers to allow the workers to be paid. County officials said there was no attempt to make the Social Security numbers appear real. Often they were assigned to a worker, for example, as a nine-number figure all of the same numeral, they said.

The Social Security numbers were meant to be temporary, but many have been used by home-care workers for long periods of time, the officials said.

Overall, state officials project that about 1,200 “pseudo” Social Security card numbers were issued since the program began in 1981.

However, Bob Barton, chief of the Adult Services Bureau of the state Department of Social Services, said the numbers will no longer be used after the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration asked state officials to abandon the system.

He denied, however, that the move was aimed at illegal aliens.

“We don’t have reason to believe that we have lots and lots of illegals out there providing this kind of service,” he said. “We haven’t had any kind of information that would validate that.”

At the same time, Barton sought to reassure the severely disabled that their attendants will not be ousted or the funds taken from home-care recipients.

“We don’t contemplate terminating them (from the program),” he said. “If they fail to obtain a valid Social Security card, we may just notify the Social Security Administration and the IRS and try and work something out.”

Julia Takeda, program director for the in-home supportive services division of the county Department of Public Social Services, also said there is no intention of penalizing either the severely disabled or their attendants.

‘Have No Way of Knowing’

“We have no way of knowing who is here illegally,” Takeda said. “We don’t sit in on the interviews and just because someone doesn’t have a Social Security card doesn’t necessarily mean they are illegal residents.”

The new federal immigration law requires every employer, including those who have only one person working regularly in their homes, to seek proof of legal residency from employees. While some advocates are lobbying for a legislative exemption for the severely disabled, others warn that despite the assurances, the severely disabled could still lose their attendants and wind up in a county hospital bed at costs ranging up to $2,000 a day.

“It would be so outrageously expensive to put someone in the hospital and take away their independence,” said Mary Blair, staff coordinator of the Los Angeles County Commission on Disabilities, who added that the panel is investigating the home-care complaints.

Nearly 140,000 disabled people statewide receive aid from the state-funded in-home supportive services program for low-income people, and about 54,500 live in Los Angeles County. In addition, many more disabled people hire attendants without government aid.

Takeda estimated that about 500 workers received pseudo numbers in Los Angeles County, but in a system that includes about 51,000 home-care providers overall, she dismissed notions that a high percentage of the home-care work-force would be affected by the new requirements.

“It’s still a very small number,” she said, stressing that initially only new home-care workers who fail to provide a valid Social Security card will be affected by the change.

Those words, however, are only partially reassuring to Linda Knipps and other advocates for the severely disabled. “It’s all promises, promises. Until I see it in writing, I will remain skeptical,” she said.

With a maximum of only $1,203 a month to spend for a live-in attendant, Knipps said the obstacles in trying to hire someone who is a legal resident are enormous.

When her weekend attendant left last April, for example, Knipps said she ran a newspaper ad and received nearly 100 responses. But of the 83 people she interviewed by phone and the 15 people she saw in person, none had proper documents and most rejected the notion of assisting a severely disabled person, she said.

“I’ve learned to speak Spanish,” she said. “This is an ongoing struggle. But for all of us, it’s still a life-or-death story.”