Cooper tells Latino community he’ll issue executive order to protect essential workers

Almost four years after Gov. Roy Cooper and Atty. Gen. Josh Stein were elected, they were asked in a public online meeting if they kept promises they made to the Latino community and if they will continue to support them.

Social distancing, proper sanitation and other necessary measures to protect agricultural workers from contagion by COVID-19 in their homes and transportation, in addition to providing testing in migrant agricultural worker camps, as well as greater protection in meatpacking plants were some of the commitments that Cooper made Thursday evening to close to a thousand members of the North Carolina Congress of Latino Organizations (NCCLO), an advocacy coalition.

“I am going to prepare an executive order to protect (essential) workers, agricultural workers, workers in meat and poultry processing plants and in other areas, and I am going to be looking for the best way that that order can be applied,” Cooper said.

Cooper said Republicans in the General Assembly have tried to limit powers that he could otherwise use to help people in the pandemic further. Nonetheless, his office is working on an executive order to enforce protective measures in agriculture and meat processing plants in particular, two industries with a heavy Latino immigrant presence.

“We have limited ways to enforce. I promise that I will do everything I can to shape these executive orders to be positive,” Cooper said, noting that he hopes that upcoming November elections will make a “gigantic difference” in the state legislature.

“COVID-19 has hit us hard,” said Ivan Parra, director of the NCCLO. “What you have said and the commitment you’ve made is well received by essential and agricultural workers.”

According to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, there were nearly 141,000 cases of COVID-19 as of Aug. 13. Of the 92,477 that have reported their ethnicity 39%, or 36,312 are Hispanic.

The highest percentages of COVID-19 among Latinos are in rural counties, many of them where poultry processing plants.

Accountability to the community

At the NCCLO meeting, Cooper and Stein reported on the pledges they made as candidates in 2016.

In 2016, Cooper made three commitments: meeting with leaders of the Latino community during the first 90 days, reinstating the Hispanic/Latino Advisory Council, strengthening relationships between Latinos and law enforcement, and improving capacity of health and human services agencies in each county to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services to the growing immigrant community.

At that time they met with more than 1,400 Latinos in a similar gathering at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Durham. Today, and due to the pandemic, the meeting was held virtually via Zoom.

More than 699 members of the community were present, which is part of the 857 delegates who are in urban and rural counties of the state such as Wake, Durham Orange, Mecklenburg, Duplin and Nash.

“We installed the advisory council, and we are working to meet Title VI health requirements,” Cooper said. did not answer all the questions on this issue and promised that his office would follow up.

On the expansion of Medicaid, Cooper said they will continue working so that “more people are covered,” and he added he would guarantee interpretation into Spanish so that families understand the system.

Cooper also pledged to veto anti-illegal immigration bills passed by the General Assembly, as he did with House Bill 370 passed in June 2019.

“That legislation was wrong. It would have cost taxpayers a lot of money and law enforcement agencies must have a good relationship with the communities, not cause fear in families,” Cooper said. “That’s why I vetoed it.”

HB 370 sought to force sheriffs to act as immigration officials, among other things.

“We were successful,” Cooper said, noting that this was a bill that came from political leaders who were using national origin to try to “divide us as a state.”

On housing, Cooper pointed to the need to continue working on affordable housing and needing input from the Latino community, many of whom live in mobile home parks across the state.

Cooper also noted that in education they are working to diversify the public school workforce.

Commitment to DACA

For his part, Stein said he would continue supporting students with DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, but he pointed out more needs to be done.

“We are going to continue supporting DACA but they need something better, something more understanding,” he said. “People need a path to citizenship. This country is strengthened by immigration.”

Regarding the issue of eviction and discrimination from landlords facing families who live in mobile home parks, he indicated that there is already an investigation into the violation of some Latino tenants’ rights.

“Unfortunately with COVID, the pace has slowed down,” said Stein. “But we are committed to ensuring that all tenants are equally protected under state laws.”

The candidates pledged to meet regularly with the Latino coalition should they be re-elected in November.

“This was an opportunity for them to explain their actions in the past and present,” Lariza Garzón, executive director of the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry in Harnett County and a member of the coalition, told Enlace Latino NC.

“Latinos helped them choose and it is up to their actions to get our vote back,” Garzón said.

This story originally appeared in Spanish in Enlace Latino NC and was translated to English by News & Observer reporter Aaron Sánchez-Guerra.

This story was originally published August 14, 2020 at 6:57 PM with the headline "Cooper tells Latino community he’ll issue executive order to protect essential workers."