President Trump has signed into law a $ 900 billion coronavirus funding package. The COVID-19 Aid Bill among other measures will provide assistance to more than 3 million U.S. citizens who have been previously denied due to being married or having an undocumented immigrant parent. This suggests that even in a dire political environment, bipartisan solutions to US immigration problems are possible.
The COVID-19 Aid Bill abolishes the marriage penalty and allows payments of $ 600 for an individual US citizen and $ 600 for each dependent child in families with an undocumented spouse. The new law also allows families to collect a COVID relief check that was denied in the first round of payments – $ 1,200 for each U.S. citizen taxpayer and $ 500 for each U.S. citizen child – when filing a 2020 tax return in the spring.
The American Business Immigration Coalition (ABIC) has joined supporters of the New York City Immigration Coalition, National Immigration Law Center, Catholic Bishops’ Conference, SEIU, United Families with Mixed Status, and more to correct this unfair and unkind mistake. As COVI9-19 infection grows across the country, stifling the economy, the new Covid funding package will offer a lifeline to more households without the punishing immigration penalty for marriage.
Over the past nine months, COVID-19 has separated Americans, but at the same time brought them closer to immigrants and the contribution they make every day. 70 percent of immigrants work in an area considered important in the United States. Refugees and immigrants are risking their lives handling and packaging meat in factories that have seen alarmingly high rates of coronavirus spread. More than half of the technological devices we use to have at least one immigrant inventor. Immigrants or their children have played a key role in the development of two highly effective vaccines. From the technology we rely on, the care of the sick, the food we eat, and vaccines distributed across the country, immigrants make up the lion’s share of the job.
John Boehner, Paul Ryan, George W. Bush, Barack Obama – everyone regretted not being able to go through immigration reform. As a result of their failures, we have just ended four years of a policy of extreme hatred and division. Trump was able to polarize against immigrants because the issue was festering and not resolved without serious legislative attempts for 25 years. This is tearing the United States apart.
This is why ABIC launched a campaign in early December to urge both political parties to come to the negotiating table and resolve the country’s immigration problems. Sensors Chuck Schumer, John Cornin, Susan Collins, and Dick Durbin have joined business leaders and advocates to push the reset button for immigration reform.
