On March 20th, Children’s HealthWatch and over 340 organizations through the Protecting Immigrant Families Campaign sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Schumer calling for immigrants to be included in the COVID-19 3.0 relief package.

We cannot protect the nation from the Coronavirus and its economic impact if we deny health care and financial relief to a large segment of our communities. The virus and its effects do not discriminate based on immigration status, and neither should relief efforts. Immigrants are front-line workers leading the response to the pandemic in the arenas such as public health, agriculture, food preparation and delivery, and cleaning and maintenance. Moreover, effective public health responses require attention to all community members, as a pandemic response that excludes any members of our communities will weaken its effectiveness. None of us can be healthy if any of us is denied access to testing and care.

As written, the bill includes two provisions that require urgent fixes for immigrant communities affected by this public health and economic crisis. A core provision of Congress’ plan to provide free COVID-19 testing to “everybody” would leave out millions of low- and moderate-income immigrants, and the tax rebate proposal currently excludes mixed-status families and ITIN tax filers.