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Covering New Communities
Immigrants wire money to their families in El Salvador at an Alante branch in the District. Alante's parent firm plans to offer payroll benefits packages.
(By Dayna Smith For The Washington Post)
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AIG and Microfinance International will sell their benefits package to local employers at $10 to $20 a month per worker. The companies hope to sign at least 25 to 30 employers this year and said they assume that the workers they enroll in the program will be legal U.S. residents who have been vetted by their employers.
Hoteliers, poultry companies and construction firms have already expressed an interest, said Kai Schmitz, executive vice president of Microfinance International, which operates its money-transfer branches under the brand name Alante.
Immigrant advocates and employers of foreign-born workers have acknowledged the gap in insurance coverage. Companies would pay for benefits packages to help retain workers in the competitive commercial construction market, said Craig Silvertooth, director of federal affairs for the National Roofing Contractors Association.
"That's something that employers would smile upon because it would remove a lot of the anxiety that immigrants face when they are here in the U.S., and they don't have savings to tap in the event of emergencies," he said. "If it could be expanded to include some kind of health-care component, that would certainly help us out."
Marriott of Bethesda said that the life insurance coverage included in its existing benefits package has been used to ship an immigrant employee's body abroad and that it recently launched a company-wide health-care assistance program that offers free nurse consultations in English and Spanish.
A major hurdle will be educating immigrants unfamiliar with insurance about the U.S. practice of buying policies to cover unforeseen risks, company executives said. AIG and Microfinance International plans to conduct on-site workshops to inform employees about insurance, which is not accessible to the poor in many Latin American countries. Some are unfamiliar with the concept of insurance altogether, said Luis Pastor, president of the Latino Community Credit Union in Durham, N.C.
"Without explaining all the costs and benefits of these new products," Pastor said, "it is just another fee you are charging people."
AIG said it has been educating low-income people in other parts of the world about insurance for years. The company decided to pursue immigrants in the United States after testing low-cost insurance packages in Africa. A decade ago, it started offering insurance to the poor in Uganda and backed micro-loans to start tiny businesses. Insuring U.S. immigrants was part of a natural progression, the company said.
"We are looking at this as one of the foundations of our business," Battifarano said.
