Nearly 3 Million U.S. Citizens and Legal Immigrants Initially Excluded under the CARES Act Are Covered under the December 2020 COVID-19 Stimulus

The $900 billion pandemic-recovery stimulus package that passed Congress in December rectified what many had viewed as a significant oversight in the earlier CARES Act: Its exclusion of U.S. citizens and legal immigrants in mixed-status families.The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) has estimated that the $2.2 trillion CARES Act enacted last March excluded 5.1 million U.S. citizens and legal immigrants from up to $1,200 each in stimulus payments because they were the children or spouses of unauthorized immigrants. MPI estimates that nearly 3 million of these excluded Americans and legal immigrants, who meet income thresholds, are now eligible for up to $600 in tax rebate payments under the new stimulus package and for retroactive receipt of CARES Act payments. The 9.3 million unauthorized immigrants whose incomes are low enough to meet the eligibility thresholds were—and remain—ineligible under both stimulus packages.With Democrats poised to regain control of the Senate and the White House and favoring increased individual stimulus payments, there likely will be a push to expand the $600 payments to $2,000; indeed GOP Senator Marco Rubio of Florida on January 12 urged President-elect Joe Biden to call on Congress to do so. Even as nearly 3 million U.S. citizens and legal immigrants in mixed-status families stand to benefit, more than 2 million U.S.-citizen and legal-immigrant children in families where both parents are unauthorized remain excluded from stimulus payments. This leaves already burdened state and local governments to fill this needs gap.

Download now or view online.