“Our main message to the legislature is to get the money out quickly, as directly as possible, to people who need it the most,” Deborah Zysman, executive director of Hawaiʻi Children’s Action Network, said. “We have high unemployment. Many families with kids said they’re food-unstable, which means you don’t know where you’re going to get your food next.”

About 59 percent of Hawaiʻi households will struggle to make ends meet by the end of this year, according to Aloha United Way.

Recently, lawmakers said that they will spend $635 million of the CARES Act funding to assist the unemployed and local businesses—adding $100 per week to weekly jobless benefits—but advocates said it’s still not enough.

Nicole Woo, senior policy analyst of Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice, said not everyone qualifies for unemployment insurance.

“Immigrants who did not have work papers cannot get unemployment insurance,” she said. “So all these plans to bump up unemployment insurance never helped them. Also, those federal stimulus checks would not allow anyone without a Social Security number to get it.”

The Working Families Coalition earlier this week released a comprehensive plan on how the human services organizations would spend the money, and about $12 million would go toward funding immigration assistance.