With the mayors of New York City and Washington, D.C., already complaining about the strain migrants arrested for illegally crossing the southern border are putting on their budgets, is now really the right time to give illegal immigrants more tax dollars?
Fortunately, Republican Sen. Mitt Romney’s Family Security Act contains a provision that ensures only those parents authorized to be in the country will receive benefits from the federal tax code.
The legislation, which provides families earning more than $10,000 a year with a $350 a month check for every child under 6 and a $250 a month check for every child between 6 and 17, is fully paid for by consolidating existing tax benefit programs and ending the state and local tax deduction, which predominantly benefits wealthy households.
By restricting eligibility for these payments to parents with Social Security numbers, illegal immigrants who only have individual tax identification numbers issued by the IRS will not be eligible for the program.
Under current law, millions of illegal immigrant parents are already collecting existing child tax credit benefits if their children have Social Security numbers. The Family Security Act would stop those payments to illegal immigrants.
With over 1.3 million illegal immigrants already caught and released into the United States under President Joe Biden, a population larger than nine states and double that of Washington, D.C., we need to make sure that policies designed to help American families are helping American families and not benefiting those who came here illegally.
