San Antonio Express-News: Up to 2.4M Texas immigrants left out of coronavirus stimulus payments
WASHINGTON — As many as 2.4 million Texans didn't get stimulus checks the federal government cut earlier this year because they are either immigrants or live with them, one way immigrants — even U.S. citizens — have been left out as Congress has poured trillions into coronavirus relief efforts.
The stimulus checks did not go to mixed-status families, meaning as many as 940,000 Texans who otherwise would have been eligible for the checks — many of them citizens — didn't get a check because they are either married to a person who came to the U.S. without legal authorization, or have parents who did, according to estimates by the Migration Policy Institute.
"President Trump and Senate Republicans left out millions of American citizens from receiving stimulus checks simply because they are married to an immigrant — this discrimination is a grave injustice," said U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. "Every hard-working, tax-paying Texan deserves economic relief during the coronavirus crisis."
Democrats in Congress want to start sending them checks soon, part of a $3 trillion coronavirus relief package the House is set to vote on as soon as Friday — a proposal that the Texas Republican Party on Thursday called "outrageous," saying "Democrats are jumping at every opportunity to push through a ludicrous list of far-left ideas."
On Thursday, President Donald Trump threatened to veto the bill, in part because it would send payments to "illegal aliens" and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted it in a speech on the Senate floor.
"Another round of checks for illegal immigrants. Can you believe it?" McConnell said. "We forgot to have the Treasury Department send money to people here illegally. My goodness, what an oversight. Thank goodness Democrats are on the case."
The checks are just one of the ways immigrants have been cut out of the federal response to the coronavirus, which has totaled some $2.5 trillion so far. Many immigrants can't access unemployment benefits or Medicaid, even as 1.6 million Texans have lost their jobs and employer-provided health care during the pandemic, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
"This has become more than a political issue as I see it. We are now getting into the area of human rights," U.S. Rep. Al Green, a Houston Democrat, said. "People should not be punished because they don't happen to have citizenship at a time when we have a pandemic that is impacting all of us … It's just unthinkable we would deny children something because the father happened to be someone who is not a citizen."
The $3 trillion relief package House Democrats rolled out this week would broaden eligibility for the stimulus checks to include anyone who pays taxes, including those with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, which is used by many unauthorized immigrants to pay federal taxes. The Democrats' plan would send $1,200 checks to everyone eligible, including children, up to $6,000 per household.
The checks had previously been limited to those who filed taxes with Social Security Numbers, meaning many U.S. citizens living with immigrants filing with taxpayer IDs were left out.
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund has sued the federal government over the issue, arguing the current setup discriminates against mixed-status couples.
"Any nation that values family should recognize the obligation to treat all married couples equally," Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF president and general counsel, said in a statement. "In the United States, a nation of and by immigrants, this unconstitutional exclusion is especially inexplicable."
Texas has the second-most people excluded from the stimulus relief, according to the Migration Policy Institute, which estimates 2.4 million Texans didn't get the checks because of immigration status. That includes some 940,000 spouses and children who are U.S. citizens or green card holders who otherwise would have qualified.
"You have a bunch of U.S. citizens in my district and other districts who are getting nothing," Castro said. "It makes no sense at all. There's no reason they shouldn't immediately give relief to every American citizen."
It's less clear how many have been unable to access other benefits Congress has boosted during the outbreak, such as unemployment, which got a $600 bump under the stimulus package, or who can't get Medicaid because of their immigration status.
The Migration Policy Institute estimates there are some 1.6 million immigrants living in Texas without legal authorization, including 416,000 in Harris County and 77,000 in Bexar County, who wouldn't be able to access unemployment.
The institute, meanwhile, has estimated that under an unemployment rate of 17.5 percent — which the U.S. is rapidly approaching — 1.6 million noncitizens living in Texas would be left uninsured, the second-most in the nation, behind only California.
In Houston, immigrants are responsible for more than 26 percent of the area's GDP, according to a study by New American Economy, and they have accounted for a third of the region's population growth over the last decade.
While 23 percent of the area's population are now foreign-born residents, they represent 30 percent of its working-age population and 31 percent of its employed labor force. More than 50 percent of construction workers in the area are foreign-born, and 32 percent of manufacturing workers are immigrants.
About 30 percent of San Antonio's business owners are immigrants, even though they make up only 13.5 percent of the city's population. About a fourth of the foreign-born population works in construction. Immigrants contribute billions of dollars a year to the San Antonio economy and are disproportionately filling science, technology and engineering jobs.