What the new COVID-19 relief package means for California’s mixed-status families
Some families living with household members with mixed legal immigration statuses are included in the latest federal COVID-19 relief package approved by Congress on Monday.
U.S. citizens in mixed-status families were denied stimulus payments under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, passed in March, if a dependent in their household did not have a Social Security Number.
For example, U.S. citizens married to someone without a Social Security number were excluded from the previous federal relief package.
This new $900-billion economic relief package would provide U.S. citizens in mixed-status families with direct payments worth $600 per adult and child, according to a statement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY.
Immigrant advocates on Monday called the inclusion of mixed-status families in the relief package, who have been hard hit by the pandemic-induced recession, “a step in the right direction.”
“It’s very significant because the large majority of undocumented immigrant workers in California go home to mixed-status families,” said Chris Hoene, executive director of the California Budget & Policy Center. “When you restrict public benefits to households that have any undocumented individuals you inadvertently hurt a lot of other folks who are here legally ... and you actually particularly harm children.”
Sasha Feldstein, economic justice policy manager at the California Immigrant Policy Center, said stimulus payments to mixed-status families are “absolutely critical,” but worries the $600 payments may not be enough to pay rent or cover other debts.
While undocumented immigrants are not assigned Social Security numbers, many file taxes by using Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers issued by the Internal Revenue Service. Under this new deal, ITIN filers are still excluded from stimulus payments even if they are parents to U.S. born children, according to Feldstein.
Nearly a third of undocumented residents in California are parents, and about 90% of those parents live with children born in the U.S., according to a California Budget & Policy Center analysis. In 2018, an estimated 2.4 million U.S. citizens in California lived with undocumented family members, according to the California Immigrant Data Portal.
About 1 in 3 undocumented workers in California work in sectors highly impacted by COVID-19 closures, according to the budget center. Those sectors include food service, child care, janitorial service and landscaping jobs.
To address the exclusion of undocumented workers from federal COVID-19 aid, California provided a one-time, state-funded COVID-19 relief assistance program in 2020 to help an estimated 150,000 undocumented immigrants — a fraction of the state’s estimated 2 million undocumented residents.
This year, Gov. Gavin Newsom also signed a law allowing low-income undocumented immigrants to receive the California Earned Income Tax Credit.
“The federal government is now following the lead of states like California, which has been pioneering, structuring policies that fairly include all immigrant families,” Hoene said. “These have been much-needed changes but they haven’t been happening at the national level, so it’s good to see the changes that we started to put in place in California spreading nationally.”
This story was originally published December 22, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "What the new COVID-19 relief package means for California’s mixed-status families."