Value Our Families: Urging for an Inclusive Relief Package
It is time we recognize the contributions of immigrants, including those who are undocumented, to the essential work that keeps our country running, especially during the pandemic. We urge Congress to include everyone, regardless of immigration status, in its COVID relief legislation.
By Michael Shang
As the country reels from both COVID-19 and a devastated economy causing over 40 million people to file for unemployment, not all communities bear the brunt of the effects equally. While many are still working from home waiting out the pandemic, millions of immigrants are “essential workers” and do not have that luxury. Over 10 million immigrants work in healthcare, social assistance, retail, and accommodation/food services. Those born outside the country are over-represented in sectors most immediately devastated by mass layoffs: among them, restaurants and hotels, office cleaning services, and in-home child care. According to the Migration Policy Institute, in total, 6 million immigrants work in some of the hardest-hit industries, and overall, 12 million immigrant workers are at the leading edge of the response to and impacts from the pandemic.
Undocumented immigrants face particular challenges. For many, working is sometimes the only way they can financially support their families. Others have contracted COVID-19 and are afraid of getting sick again if they return to their jobs. Many undocumented immigrants, whose jobs often already put them at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19, fear that testing could result in deportation. Others fear that seeking treatment, despite assurances from the government saying otherwise, would trigger the new “public charge” rule, or “wealth test” and affect their chances of obtaining legal status.
Although Congress passed the CARES Act to help mitigate some of the people’s economic challenges, they left out an estimated 15.4 million people, including 10 million undocumented immigrants, from the bills cash payments. Over 4.3 million of the people excluded from the bill file their taxes with an individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN) and another estimated 1.2 million citizens married to undocumented immigrants and 5 million children, most of whom are citizens. This means that despite a report from the Center on Poverty & Social Policy at Columbia University indicating that the CARES Act has reportedly helped potentially prevent 12 million more people from entering into poverty, undocumented immigrants and those in families with undocumented immigrants will not get any such help. Before the pandemic, undocumented families were already twice as likely to experience hunger and up to three times as likely to live in poverty as the general population, and it is likely that we will see even higher rates of hunger and poverty among those who are undocumented.
And this is to say nothing of those detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where over half of those tested by June 4 tested positive for COVID-19, and where conditions are dire in one Virginia facility, nearly 75% of detainees have contracted COVID-19. In one case, when referring to ICE’s failure to provide the most basic health protections for children and families in detention, a federal judge described the facilities as being “on fire” and ordered the children’s release. But the judge could not order that parents and children be released together. Only ICE has the authority to do that, and so far ICE has only offered parents a “binary choice,” making them choose between signing away their parental rights so that their children are released from COVID-19-ravaged detention facilities or being detained indefinitely in those same facilities.
We need a compassionate response to this crisis, and Congress must mitigate the pain that millions of people feel throughout the country, regardless of their immigration status. The House has already taken action in passing the HEROES Act which expanded economic relief and access to healthcare to people regardless of their status and offered extensions on unemployment insurance. Now, the Senate must act.
Recently, my fellow interns and I helped schedule and coordinate about 70 meetings with members of Congress and Senators for the Value Our Families Campaign’s Week of Action. And I personally had the opportunity to speak to my elected officials, to share my family’s story of coming to the U.S., and to advocate for three broad policy goals: protecting immigrants and refugees during the pandemic, defunding hate, and protecting the U.S. family-based immigration system. Ultimately, in these unprecedented times, COVID-19 does not discriminate between those it affects. In providing support, Congress should not either.
Michael Shang was a summer law clerk with Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC.
The Value Our Families Campaign exists to protect, preserve, and strengthen the family immigration system and promote an immigration system that is informed by love, empathy and justice. We are a network of local and national community-based and advocacy organizations who reject attacks and proposed harmful changes to our current family-based immigration system. Advancing Justice | AAJC is a founding member of Value Our Families.
