December 22, 2020, Hyattsville, MD – CASA’s Chief of Federal Policy Alonzo Washington issued the following statement after Congress reached a bipartisan agreement for stimulus checks. While it ends the marriage penalty, it excludes about 3 million U.S. Citizen children of noncitizen parents.

“This stimulus package should have been a temporary reprieve to all families reeling from coronavirus. Instead, $600 comes as a band aid to a bullet wound to some families who have fallen behind on rent and other bills. The biggest blow is that undocumented families are again purposely left out. Their social and economic contributions as members of American society are invaluable. It is an outrage that these frontline workers brave the risks of the virus – usually without health care – and yet they receive no thanks for sacrificing their health and their jobs.”

With CASA’s support, Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) and Villanova Law Professor Leslie Book filed a complaint challenging the intentional and discriminatory exclusion of U.S. citizen children from the benefits of emergency cash assistance distributed in response to the coronavirus pandemic, based solely on the fact that one or both of their parents are undocumented immigrants.

A UCLA study published in August found the exclusion of undocumented residents and their families from the $1,200 given to taxpayers resulted in a loss of $10 billion in potential economic output. The potential spending by undocumented immigrants would have supported 112,000 jobs nationally and produced $14 billion in economic output.

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With over 100,000 members across the states of Maryland, Virginia, and South Central Pennsylvania, CASA is the largest member-based Latino and immigrant organization in the mid-Atlantic region. Visit us at www.wearecasa.org and follow us on Twitter at @CASAforall