On Saturday's CBS This Morning: Saturday and CBS Weekend News, the shows each devoted a full report to airing complaints over efforts by the federal government to prevent illegal immigrants from benefiting from stimulus payments, such as the two families featured in which one of the spouse each is an illegal alien.
Setting up the report in the latter show, anchor Jamie Yuccas recalled that President Donald Trump is planning to approve a second round of stimulus checks, and then lamented: "...but that's not comforting to more than a million Americans who were excluded from the first round of payments."
Then came a report by correspondent Adriana Diaz in which she spoke with two women who are married to illegal immigrants and are therefore ineligible to receive a stimulus check. The CBS reporter began: "Katelyn Jimenez, a nurse from Wisconsin, was counting on the stimulus. Her husband's restaurant hours were cut in the shutdown, and they have two girls to support."
After noting that Katelyn Jimenez and another woman, named Laurie, were "left out" of the stimulus payments, Diaz explained: "The CARES Act left out left out couples who file jointly if one spouse lacks a Social Security number, even if the other is a U.S. citizen, sparking outrage in places like this Facebook group for mixed status families."
She soon only briefly delved into opposition by Republicans to allowing illegal immigrants to receive payments:
DIAZ: The Heroes Act would provide stimulus payments to all taxpayers regardless of status, but there's opposition,
CONGRESSMAN JIM JORDAN (R-OH): This bill does what? It gives tax dollars to illegal immigrants.
Without going into any more specific argument against rewarding illegal immigrants with such checks, Diaz, speaking to Jimenez, only mildly pressed: "What do you say to the argument that some lawmakers have put forward, which is they don't want undocumented folks to benefit in any way?"
After noting the concerns of one of Jimenez's daughters who is afraid her father will contract COVID-19, the report ended on a note sympathetic to the plight of the Jimenez family.
Below is the complete transcript from Diaz's report on June 27's CBS Weekend News:
CBS Weekend News
June 27, 2020
6:39 p.m. EasternJAMIE YUCCAS: President Trump promised a second round of stimulus payments in an interview earlier this week, but that's not comforting to more than a million Americans who were excluded from the first round of payments. Here's CBS's Adriana Diaz.
ADRIANA DIAZ: Katelyn Jimenez, a nurse from Wisconsin, was counting on the stimulus. Her husband's restaurant hours were cut in the shutdown, and they have two girls to support.
KATELYN JIMENEZ, WIFE OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT: We needed it just as badly as anybody else needed it.
DIAZ: But Katelyn and other Americans like Laurie from Illinois were ineligible for the stimulus.
LAURIE, WIFE OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT: It does make me feel kind of like a second-class citizen, in a way, just because of who I married.
DIAZ: The CARES Act left out left out couples who file jointly if one spouse lacks a Social Security Number, even if the other is a U.S. citizen, sparking outrage in places like this Facebook group for mixed status families.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: How dare you?! Because me and my kids are being effected.
DIAZ: Laurie's husband who is undocumented doesn't have a Social Security Number. Neither do many immigrants here legally on visas or foreigners marred to Americans abroad. Instead, he pays taxes with an individual ID number.
LAURIE, So they, like, punish us because, you know, he's not a United States citizen. You know, like, how could you punish a child that was born here, like an innocent child?
DIAZ: The HEROES Act would provide stimulus payments to all taxpayers regardless of status, but there's opposition.
CONGRESSMAN JIM JORDAN (R-OH): This bill does what? It gives tax dollars to illegal immigrants.
DIAZ: What do you say to the argument that some lawmakers have put forward, which is they don't want undocumented folks to benefit in any way?
JIMENEZ: We, as a family, we would have, you know, we would have, you know, put that money back into the economy.
DIAZ: Katelyn's older daughter worries about her dad, who found a new job in landscaping.
UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: I get nervous that he's going to, like, get sick when he goes to work.
DIAZ: Her father, Samuel, used to be undocumented, but, after a seven-year process, he just got a green card and a Social, but it was too late for the stimulus.
JIMENEZ: We didn't matter as a family.
DIAZ: You feel like you don't matter?
JIMENEZ: Yeah.
DIAZ: In your own country?
JIMENEZ: Yeah.
DIAZ: A citizen second-guessing her own status in America. Adriana Diaz, CBS News, Waukesha, Wisconsin.
