WASHINGTON — US citizen kids whose parents are undocumented immigrants filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Tuesday challenging their exclusion from a coronavirus relief program that Congress intended to benefit children.
Under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES Act, eligible families can receive up to $500 for each child under 17, in addition to the $1,200 maximum payment available to individual adults.
But the Trump administration and Congress won’t pay out CARES Act money to undocumented immigrant parents for their US citizen children. The children named as plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Maryland, using their initials, are between seven months and nine years old. Their parents paid federal and state taxes, and would otherwise meet the income-based criteria for being eligible for relief funds, per court papers.
“The refusal to distribute this benefit to U.S. citizen children undermines the CARES Act’s goal of providing assistance to Americans in need, frustrates the Act’s efforts to jumpstart the economy, and punishes citizen children for their parents’ status — punishment that is particularly nonsensical given that undocumented immigrants, collectively, pay billions of dollars each year in taxes,” lawyers for the children and their families wrote in the complaint.
Read the rest here: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/kids-undocumented-immigrants-coronavirus-stimulus-checks