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Aid for Small Hispanic Businesses Approved

MUST BE REQUESTED BEFORE MARCH 11

Newsroom El Comercio de Colorado

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The White House has made changes to the program that seeks to keep companies afloat during the pandemic. President Joe Biden announced that steps have been taken to make loans more easily accessible to smaller businesses and those run by minorities such as Latinos or legal immigrants.

“The country’s small businesses are having a hard time, and they need help now,” President Biden said. “Since the pandemic began, 400,000 small businesses have closed, and millions more are hanging by a thread. The hardest hit are the black, Latino, and Asian American communities,” the President added.

Therefore, from February 24 to March 10, only companies with fewer than 20 employees will be able to apply for loans under the so-called Payroll Protection Program (PPP). This program was created last year by Congress to help companies continue to pay their staff during the pandemic.

Using the ITIN

With this change, the White House seeks to help a group of companies that represent 98 percent of the country’s small businesses. However, many of these small businesses have been unable to obtain a loan because “other large companies beat them to the fore and were first in line,” according to Biden.

The Small Business Administration (SBA) is going to focus exclusively on small business applications for these two weeks. Under the new SBA guidelines, business owners who are not US citizens but are legal residents can apply for loans using their ITINs.

Loans for Self-employed Workers

The government also promised to review the formula it uses to calculate loans. This change could allow independent contractors or self-employed workers to obtain these types of credits from which they were excluded. 70 percent of single-employee businesses are owned by women or non-white people.

Finally, Biden announced plans to eliminate program requirements that prevent access to loans for entrepreneurs who have a prior criminal conviction or have defaulted on their federal student loans in the past seven years. Biden insisted that Congress must approve the new economic rescue plan before March 14.