Letters to the Editor: Enforcing Trump’s anti-immigrant policies makes no sense in a pandemic

To the editor: It is outrageous that taxpayers married to noncitizens who are paying their taxes too are not receiving COVID-19 relief checks from the federal government.

Can someone please ask one of the scientists on the White House’s coronavirus task force if it’s a good or bad idea, medically speaking, to prevent a group of 10.5 million people and their citizen family members — 7.6 million of whom work (according to the Pew Research Center), many in “essential” businesses keeping us alive — from the medical and economic benefits of COVID-19 relief programs?

Besides relief checks, this can include sick leave, health insurance and access to disinfection and protective gear. Why could it possibly make medical sense to enforce the Trump administration’s political and racial strategies targeted at undocumented immigrants during a global pandemic?

David Hernández, Northampton, Mass.

The writer is a professor of Latino/a studies at Mount Holyoke College who researches immigration enforcement.

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To the editor: Why didn’t one of the noncitizen spouses in this article get his green card and a Social Security number? He can still remain a Mexican citizen as a legal permanent resident of the United States.

Many immigrants do not want a Social Security number so they do not have to declare income from sources outside the U.S. Here, taxes as based on total income, including from foreign sources.

If your spouse does not want to pay U.S. taxes on your income from abroad, why should you expect a taxpayer-funded stimulus check? You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Andrew Ko, San Marino