Special Use of COVID Fund for Illegal Immigrant Subsidy

In Thursday’s Common Sense, “Paid Invaders,” Paul Jacob discussed the U.S. taxpayers’ subsidies going to the ongoing illegal immigrants crossing the southern border. But the sheer size of the subsidies and handouts is hard to grasp. So consider just one state of the union, on the border with Canada, not Mexico, but which found a way to find the funds to help migrants who came up from the South.

“Washington State diverted over $400 million of federal relief funds to illegal aliens in 2023,” reports Anthony Brian Logan. “The money was taken from a COVID-19 fund and was not meant to shore up migrants’ inability to make ends meet. Under this program, migrants who were not entitled to stimulus money due to their illegal status were given checks of up to $3,000 each. An estimated 300,000 illegal aliens may have been given cash through this method in Washington State alone.”

An article in The New York Post, linked to by Mr. Logan, places the 2023 total of hijacked funds at $60 million less:

A new report is highlighting how federal COVID funds were used in Washington state to give $1,000 checks to illegal immigrants who were ineligible to receive federal economic impact payments during the pandemic due to their immigration status.

The report, by the Economic Policy Innovation Center (EPIC), points to money administered by the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF), which was created by the American Rescue Plan Act and was intended to help state and local governments with their response and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Washington state received $4.4 billion in funding overall from that program.

The report from the group, which calls for a smaller federal government, highlighted how $340 million in funding went to a program that sent $1,000 checks to illegal immigrants in the state.

Adam Shaw, “Washington state diverted $340M in federal COVID funds to migrants,” New York Post, February 3, 2024.

The program was announced in 2022, by the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, expressing the usual press-release pride:

“The DSHS Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance has been honored and humbled to work with our community partners over the past two years to support the WA COVID-19 Immigrant Relief Fund,” said Sarah Peterson, who heads the Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance. “This is a tremendous opportunity for DSHS to help people who may have been left out of other federal and state resources to address the economic impact of the pandemic.”

The agency’s goal is to get these resources into the hands of community members in a timely and thoughtful manner and has partnered with many different immigrant-led organizations to implement this fund effectively and safely.

“Washington COVID-19 Immigrant Relief Fund launches new application period Sept. 19-Nov. 14,” Medium, September 19, 2022.

In his discussion of the program, Anthony Brian Logan notes that the federal source of the hand-outs to migrants was, by law, disallowed for that purpose.