Group seeks aid for Latinos who were denied
WASHINGTON — As Congress negotiates the next coronavirus relief package, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is pushing for it to target relief to Latinos, with polls showing that nearly 30 percent of their households in Texas didn’t get economic stimulus checks or any other support from the federal coronavirus relief bill passed in March.
Among the biggest issues: The last round of stimulus checks did not go to as many as 940,000 Texans who are citizens or legal U.S. residents because their spouses or parents entered the country without legal authorization, according to estimates by the Migration Policy Institute. Members of such “mixed-status” families were cut out of the stimulus aid.
Yet the coronavirus has disproportionately hammered the Hispanic community. Latinos made up 35 percent of all COVID-19 cases for which data on race and ethnicity were available as of July 1, according to a recent report by national advocacy group UnidosUS. Latinos make up 19 percent of the U.S. population. The same data show that Latinos account for 55 percent of all confirmed COVID-19 cases in children.
“Sadly, our fellow Texans — particularly Latinos and communities of color — are now bearing the brunt of this suffering,” U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat who chairs the CHC, wrote in a letter to U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn of Texas. “It is imperative that the federal government take robust action to provide the assistance that our constituents desperately need.”
More than three-quarters of Latinos in Texas are worried that they wouldn’t be able to afford COVID-19 treatment if they got sick, according to a May poll by the two advocacy groups. Nearly 60 percent of Latinos, meanwhile, say they have struggled to buy food, medicine and household items, while 40 percent are having trouble making rent or mortgage payments.
Over the last two months, rapid case growth among Hispanic residents has drastically outpaced COVID-19 spread among other ethnicities, the Houston Chronicle reported, with up to 65 percent of those hospitalized being of Hispanic ethnicity. Hispanics account for 43 percent of Harris County’s residents. Experts say language barriers and lack of translated health information are a big reason.
Castro is pushing for the next relief package to include provisions included in the version that House Democrats passed earlier this year that would, among other things, direct stimulus checks to anyone who pays taxes, including those with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, used by many immigrants living in the country illegally to pay federal taxes.
He is also calling for automatic extension of work permits for people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and those with temporary protected status, which the House legislation would do, as well. Texas is home to more than 106,000 DACA recipients, according to estimates by the Migration Policy Institute. Castro’s letter says there are 48,600 people with temporary protected status in Texas.
All told, as many as 2.4 million Texas immigrants and their families — including those who are in the country illegally — didn’t get stimulus checks the federal government cut earlier this year.