At a telenews conference on Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated that she has not given up on the effort to get stimulus payments to illegal aliens. The $2.2 trillion economic relief package enacted in March explicitly excluded payments to people who filed tax returns using Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs), whether they filed individually, or jointly with a spouse who has a valid Social Security number. Many ITIN filers are illegal aliens.
While Pelosi’s efforts are ostensibly aimed at securing payments for “mixed status” families, i.e. those that include both legal and illegal residents, her statements at the press conference indicate that her true goal is to get government relief money into the hands of all illegal aliens who file with ITINs.
“We have been working to get the tax identification number as a basis for how people would get direct payments. I myself cannot understand why the tax number is not the basis for how some of this money is distributed, so we’ll be making that case,” said Pelosi.
Reinforcing that reading of her statement, Pelosi also reiterated her oft-stated belief that people who violate our immigration laws are every bit as part of the fabric of our nation as citizens and legal immigrants. “We are well served if we recognize that everybody in our country is part of our community,” and presumably every bit as deserving of scarce relief funds as the 30 million or so legal U.S. residents who have lost jobs since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even if that does not happen, Pelosi indicated that the Federal Reserve may find back channels to funnel money to illegal aliens through loans to nonprofits that assist them.
Whether there is another government stimulus package on the horizon is very much in doubt, as some members of Congress and economists have raised concerns about taking on more debt. What should not be in doubt is that whatever resources are available should be dedicated to helping the 30 million (and counting) American workers who have lost jobs. What also appears not to be in doubt is that Pelosi and her allies will never give up on creating entitlements for illegal aliens, no matter how dire the situation is for everyone else.
