Trump’s UnChristian Treatment of My Family This Christmas

My name is Edgar Cabrera, and I am a U.S. citizen living in Macon, Georgia. President Trump’s marriage penalty hurts me and the 166,000 other Americans in Georgia who were denied Covid relief checks because we married or have a parent who is not a citizen. Unequal treatment of U.S. citizens is morally wrong, economically harmful and politically foolish.

I am the parish coordinator for a Hispanic ministry. I heard the calling from God to serve as a bridge between American and Hispanic communities, not just in our faith but in our shared culture. I met my wife Maria at our church over four years ago. We fell in love and got married.

Nearly 2 million U.S. citizens like me were left out of the first round of covid relief checks because we filed taxes with an immigrant who used an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN, a legal alternative to a Social Security number. With my hours cut back and my wife working at a manufacturing company that saw a big covid spread, a stimulus check meant the difference between staying home and quarantining when we get sick or going to work to put food on the table.

I was overjoyed to hear on Monday night that Congress corrected this unkind and unjust mistake. With a veto proof majority, Congress passed a $900 Billion covid relief package that included payments of $600 for an individual U.S. Citizen and $600 for each dependent child in mixed-status families. The new bill also allows families to recover the covid relief check I was denied in the first round of stimulus payments — $1,200 for each U.S. citizen taxpayer and $500 for each U.S. citizen child — when we file our 2020 taxes next year.

Then on Tuesday, President Trump, in a video posted on Twitter, falsely claimed that “family members of illegal aliens” would receive “far more than the Americans are given.” These family members who are finally eligible are American citizens like me and we will receive exactly the same payments as other American Citizens — less actually because my wife is still ineligible.

Trump is using lies to discriminate against Americans. Penalizing US Citizens because we married or have a parent who is not a citizen is morally wrong. It is also economically harmful — denying checks to nearly 3.5 million U.S. Citizen spouses and children including 166,000 in Georgia will result in a loss of over $5.9 billion in local economic activities.

In fact, including U.S. citizens in mixed status families is popular. Recent polling shows that 91% of registered voters believe that households with citizens and undocumented immigrants should be eligible to receive cash assistance from federal covid relief funds, and 84% of Republican voters agreed that mixed-status household should get relief.

I voted in November and will vote on January 5th in Georgia’s special election that will determine the control of the US Senate. Like me, 166,000 other citizens in Georgia who live in mixed status families are watching closely. Blowing up a bipartisan consensus just before Christmas, and attacking 166,000 US citizens in Georgia is politically very foolish for such an important state.