When it comes to distributing welfare support, immigrants often fall to the back of the queue, with undocumented immigrants among the last of all. Research from USC suggests this is a mistake, and expanding tax credit eligibility to such people would be hugely beneficial in terms of reducing child poverty.
The authors highlight how the Biden administration has pledged to cut child poverty in half. With an estimated 20% of children living in poverty, many citizens are eligible for state support, but that is only so for families that are legally in the country.
Government support
At the moment, the government provides support to low-income families via the Earned Income Tax Credit, which aims to incentivize work by topping up the wages people earn depending on the person’s marital status and number of children. The program is only eligible, however, to those with a Social Security number.
The researchers illustrate how early attempts to open this program up to undocumented migrants have been successful in California and Colorado. While they accept that expanding access is not a silver bullet in terms of fixing child poverty, it is certainly a crucial step towards that goal.
“You have to see it in the context of a larger effort,” they say. “This is a fairly simple, narrow, targeted effort that would have a big impact in terms of the effectiveness of what you’re trying to do.”
Improving immigration
As well as helping to reduce child poverty, the researchers also believe such an expansion would also improve the immigration system as it would overcome the often extremely polarized debates around citizenship.
“This can be fixed without addressing the parents’ immigration status,” they say. “This is a way of examining one of the results of a broken immigration system and fixing it with available tools.”
It’s also, crucially, a step that the researchers believe could be delivered through the political mill as it doesn’t focus specifically on taxpayers themselves and it’s something that states can do independently of Congress.
Fixing the problem
As with so many things, Covid has exacerbated the problem, with the United States seeing the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression. It’s a situation that has exposed the problems that undocumented immigrants have faced for many years, with those low-income families most severely affected.
The authors highlight that Los Angeles alone is believed to be home to around 900,000 undocumented immigrants, with many living in the kind of housing that has made social distancing difficult during the pandemic.
They argue that making this change is such a no-brainer it should be considered an investment in the future on a par with investing in public schools, as removing children from poverty has huge implications for their adult lives. It’s also fairer as undocumented migrants often pay taxes on their income for benefits they cannot receive.
“Keeping them as a subset of the population is wrong on a moral level and detrimental to society as a whole,” they say.
There are over 10 million people living in the United States without documentation, and for too long they have been wished away or brushed under the carpet. With 60% of these people having lived in the country for over 10 years, they’re a group that is not going anywhere.
By expanding EITC eligibility the government will address the challenge of childhood poverty in a sensible and logical way.
“It’s a really large segment of the population that’s being overlooked. You simply can’t hit ambitious goals like that while ignoring such a big chunk of the population,” the researchers conclude. “Changing EITC eligibility could provide a notably brighter future for millions of children. Moreover, action at the federal level may help the entire country recover from 18 months of economic turmoil while firmly acknowledging immigrants’ fundamental role in our society.”
