We Pay Taxes. We Need Help. But the Stimulus Excludes Undocumented Families.
We can’t pretend to be shocked that tax-paying immigrants are left out of the coronavirus relief plan. It’s always been this way.
My parents comprise part of the United States’ most vulnerable population: They are undocumented. My mother is a house cleaner, working inside the homes of upper-middle-class white people. Though she has seen her income decline due to coronavirus, she hasn’t lost all her business. Tomorrow morning, she’ll wake before dawn and haul her cleaning supplies to a few homes for a grueling day’s work. My dad, too, is still working. He is a contractor with a company that works with food. Just as the grocery store workers are essential, so too are the people who supply their products. But with the company’s finances tanking, he worries about the future of his job. Like the bulk of undocumented immigrants—working in areas like food prep, agriculture, and cleaning services—they have found themselves at the front lines of the pandemic. They are both the most exposed and the most vulnerable. And they can’t count on the government’s stimulus package for help.
Congress’s $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill, and the stimulus checks included in it, has sparked a slight wave of relief for many…
