Post by John Markola. Colgate class of 2021.

Source: Dickerson, Caitlin. “Married to an Undocumented Immigrant? You May Not Get a Stimulus Check.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 28 Apr. 2020.

In Caitlin Dickerson’s article “Married to an Undocumented Immigrant? You May Not Get a Stimulus Check.” in the New York Times, she addresses this interesting feature of the stimulus fund program and brings up specific instances of families affected by this across the country. I can understand why the government would not give a stimulus check to an undocumented immigrant, but I was surprised to learn that U.S. citizens that are married to these people are also excluded from being able to receive such federal payments. The article explains that this is a result of a provision in the legislation that created the stimulus fund, and that it generally received little attention. I found this to be interesting because the topic of undocumented immigrants living in America is extremely prevalent in American media and it was just surprising to me that in all that was discussed about this legislation publicly, that “people who file taxes jointly with someone who uses an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, a common substitute for a Social Security number used mostly by immigrants without legal status” are prohibited from receiving these payments.

Approximately 1.2 million Americans are in this position, and to me, it just seems unethical to have such a provision in this legislation. The country is currently being hit with a massive unemployment crisis from the spread of COVID-19 and many have been put in extremely difficult positions as a result, and seeing that so many people are unable to receive help just because of this provision is a little frustrating. Dickerson also explains that larger households in financial distress may lose out on thousands of federal dollars because of a single undocumented family member. Overall, I just thought this was a very important thing to address the stimulus fund, and I am surprised that this has not been talked about more.