Coronavirus + Trump + GOP = Genocide in America

Someone once said, "Spirit will never give us more than we can handle." I thought that line-in-the-emotional sand was crossed a few years ago when we first received word my husband may be unjustly deported into the dangers of El Salvador. After a long and stressful battle with immigration, we looked forward to our case finally be heard in a Chicago immigration court on April 8, 2020. With just a few days left to wait, our day in court was postponed to stop the spread of the fatal Coronavirus rapidly spreading across the globe and into our home.  Read about our journey at DeportingLove.com.

The love of my life, my beautiful Salvadoran husband, Luis Enrique Gonzalez-Ortiz lay struggling to breathe. As the virus invaded his lungs, I read the headline, "Coronavirus and the deadly unfairness of selective stimulus." Now, this was the moment of my breaking.  Fear and grief overcame me that morning as I struggled to comprehend, how could such cruelty even be possible in 21st-century America?

Since 2018, we've lived with the terror that ICE may one day show up at our door to take Enrique away. On this morning, the emotions were inexplicable as I thought I might lose him to COVID-19, a flu virus that, like the hate unleashed by the current administration, is destroying lives across America. The panic we both felt as his chest tightened, making it even the more challenging to breathe was excruciating. Unlike deportation, death would be permanent separation from my beloved. Making it all the more surreal was the realization of what excluding immigrant families from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act” or the “CARES Act” would mean. 

Coronavirus Proliferation without Federal Aid for Immigrants - Discrimination, Genocide, or Ethnic Cleansing?

Photo by: Rip Shaub

As of the time of this writing, 1,284,665(1) humans worldwide have contracted the virus claiming the lives of 70,319 people to date while a perfect storm for a stealth American genocide gets underway. Social distancing has been determined to be the only method to stop transmission resulting in the cancellation or postponement of public events across the nation. 

In an epic move to prevent the virus spread, the Indy 500 race typically held in May, has been postponed until August. To illustrate the gravity of the situation, according to Wikipedia, "the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) holds a permanent seating capacity for more than 235,000 people and infield seating that raises capacity to an approximate 400,000." The highly contagious Cornavirus has infected more than three times the total size of IMS the world over and has already killed what would translate to 1 in every 5 spectators.

Word of the brutal strategic discriminatory tactics in Federal safety-nets lays the foundation for disproportionate illness and death within a specific segment of American society. The continued spread of the virus, increased fatalities, and excruciating financial hardship within the immigrant population will likely be the outcome.

Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Rapid Transmission Rate

The converging forces of COVID-19 and the xenophobic tactics of the Trump administration and the GOP will result in unprecedented burdens for immigrant families across America. By way of omission from Federal relief, the Trump administration has once again intentionally turned the nation's back on the already marginalized population. The systematic exclusion of a segment of the population from equal protections promised to American citizens in the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution is murder - nothing less. The Federal “CARES Act”, authored with guidance from the White House and presented by conservative Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is but another nail-in-the-coffin of the targeted immigrant population. State-sponsored discrimination, genocide, or the start of ethnic cleansing, loss of human life in a specific shuttered community is all but assured.

Taxes Paid - Benefits Never Realized

Millions of immigrants using U.S. issued tax-IDs have paid billions into U.S. tax coffers for years. Said to be a crime, their unlawful presence, how is it not aiding and abetting the supposed "criminals" when the U.S. Government looks the other way while issuing Federal Tax ID's to immigrants and gladly amasses income tax revenues. Requiring their payment of income taxes as a demonstration of "good moral character (GMC) in the U.S. tax code without returning equal benefits is white-collar robbery plain and simple.

USCIS establishes specific measures with which to adjudicate what constitutes GMC with the payment of income taxes identified as an important marker. Despite decades of paying into the system, the CARES Act, like many other social welfare policies before it, explicitly excludes tax-paying immigrant families, a most vulnerable and already targeted segment of American society, from receiving the life-sustaining benefit - a move that will all but ensure increased incidences of infection with the virus, financial hardship, and death while disproportionately exposing this segment of society to grave harm compared to all other human lives within the nation.

These taxpayers won't get stimulus checks. Thats unjust - CNN

In the midst of this economic crisis caused by the coronavirus, there is broad bipartisan support in Congress to provide payments to American taxpayers to offset the economic impact of the coronavirus. Case in point, after 15-years of paying into U.S. tax coffers with an IRS-issued Federal Tax Identification Number (ITIN), my husband, Enrique Gonzalez, as with millions of other tax-paying immigrants, will not receive Federal stimulus checks intended to help families to weather the historic, catastrophic event that is indiscriminately sweeping the nation. While most states have issued unpreceded government-issued stay-at-home orders inhibiting workers' ability to work and to provide for their families, food, health care services, medication, and more will be hard to come by for immigrant families explicitly left behind. 

Constitutional Infringement - 14TH Amendment Right to Equal Protection Denied 

Since we tied the knot after the 2014 legalization of same-sex marriage, Enrique and I have filed joint tax returns year-after-year. At 51-years of age, a retired health information technology executive, I have paid more than my fair share of taxes as a single male with little deductions. The combination of higher taxable income and fewer deductions resulted in a lifetime of paying more than most married-filing-joint households, and yet, I too will be excluded from receiving CARES Act benefits solely because my husband has filed with an ITIN in our joint annual filings.

"The CARES Act denies the rebate to an eligible individual with a Social Security number if the individual filed a joint return with a spouse who has an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), or filed a return with a qualifying child who has an ITIN."(2)

Three significant issues arise from this action: 1) the blatant discrimination and infringement on 14th Amendment rights to equal protection, 2) the unethical, immoral, and inhumane treatment of a group of people who will also suffer great harm amidst the pandemic, and 3) robbery, plain and simple. 

The United States Government is stealing from immigrants required to pay income taxes using a Federally assigned ITIN while simultaneously barring the very individuals who are adhering to the standards of GMC from receiving Federal Aid - the omission of which, under the catastrophic global pandemic, will not only cost innocent lives but will further ensure the spread of a lethal virus among an already marginalized population in America. This is unconscionable, its discrimination, and - for the U.S. Citizens protected by the 14th Amendment - it is illegal and prosecutable in the court of law. 

While I can't begin to express the pain I feel for a government that has robbed my husband for more than a decade and is now unjustly stealing from me, even the more intolerable is the case of a family friend, a 27-year old DACA recipient, and mother of three young children who works as an independent contractor installing flooring in apartment complexes across the state. She has filed taxes with a government-issued social security number while her mother, also living in the household, files with an ITIN - a disqualifying factor for the entire household determined by the Cares Act to be a "mixed-status household.'  Despite the near lock-down social distancing and stay-at-home mandate in our state, she will have no choice but to continue to work. Exposing herself and her family to a higher risk of contracting the Novel Coronavirus while facing devastating health and financial implications. 

(4-26-2020) IndyStar/Hackney: Looking for that stimulus check? 

These tax-paying Hoosiers won't get one

Like our friend, immigrant mothers and fathers across the nation seeking to provide for their families under already excruciating circumstances will have no choice but to continue to get out and work. In doing so, they will not only risk their own health by increased exposure but, an increase in transmission of the virus will likely continue. This disproportionate and unequal exclusion of benefits (and lack of equal protection of a group of people in American society) may result in increased fatalities among the immigrant population. 

Sadly, most immigrant families who will suffer will refuse to rise up against the grave injustice perpetrated by this administration in fear of losing DACA or negatively impacting their journey towards legalization. The xenophobic administration - the bully on the playground - is again winning in the strategic efforts to terrorize and harm this segment of American society. Worse still, is the blatant attack on the constitutional rights of U.S. citizen spouses living within mixed-status households. My 14th Amendment right to equal protection is under attack because I am in love with and married to an immigrant who files with the United States issued TaxID.

Equal Protection Under Seige

As a U.S. citizen, the United States Constitution assures that I should receive "equal protection." A guarantee under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that a state must treat an individual or class of individuals the same as it treats other individuals or classes in like circumstances(3)

This administration's discriminatory CARE Act protects the stockpile of tax revenues held in the IRS tax surplus paid by hard-working immigrant families like ours. By discriminating against my family and millions of other mixed-status families, this administration is exposing immigrants to unconscionable hardship that will result in loss of life. There is no equal protection! Is this not ethnic cleansing or worse - genocide?

Discrimination, Ethnic Cleansing, or Genocide in America?

According to FindLaw.com, "In the context of civil rights law, unlawful discrimination refers to unfair or unequal treatment of an individual (or group) based on certain characteristics, including age, disability, ethnicity, gender, marital status, national origin, race, religion, and sexual orientation.(4)

Encyclopedia Britannica suggests, "Ethnic cleansing as a concept has generated considerable controversy. Some critics see little difference between the term and genocide. Defenders, however, argue that ethnic cleansing and genocide can be distinguished by the intent of the perpetrator: whereas the primary goal of genocide is the destruction of an ethnic, racial, or religious group, the main purpose of ethnic cleansing is the establishment of ethnically homogeneous lands, which may be achieved by any of a number of methods including genocide."(5) 

The United Nations defines genocide as, "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.(6)


Proving once again the age-old adage, "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck - it is a duck!" There could be no other way to describe this latest unconscionable discriminatory policy led by conservatives. 
Case in point, in a social media discussion with professional soccer player Megan Rapinoe, New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shines a light on the GOP led discrimination, “Literally, what we’re told by, from the Republicans, what I’ve been told in the negotiations with Mitch McConnell, and Donald Trump, and, like, all of these folks, is that they said ‘anything for immigrants is a non-starter,'” Ocasio-Cortez explained.

Watch the full interview on Instagram here.

Once again, the White House and GOP-led Congress have systematically discriminated against immigrants. When combined with a non-discriminating planetary pandemic that is killing thousands, the results can only be increased illness, death, pain, and financial strife for the already marginalized population. How is that not discrimination, ethnic cleansing, and/or genocide in America? This administration knows precisely what the results will be.

Summary

While my beautiful Latino husband lies struggling to breathe, terrified that I might lose him - not to the long-feared efforts of U.S. immigration but to the ravage of the Coronavirus of 2020 - the fear, terror, and grief overwhelmed me. Disappointed by the notice of the postponement of our April 8th hearing, the rush of emotions was excruciating as I realized the systematic and continued discrimination that immigrant families will endure as the United States has again turned its back on an innocent segment of society - the costs of which may be catastrophic. Fatalities, financial burdens, illness, pain, and suffering are in the waiting for immigrant men, women, and children in the midst of a global pandemic of epic proportions. All the while, an attack on the constitutional right to equal protection has been unleashed. 

Terrified at the prospects of losing my husband either to deportation or a senseless disease, it could all have been prevented if only Trump had heeded the warnings and sounded the alarms weeks prior. While public benefit would be helpful in our greatest time of need, their strategic move to exclude immigrant families from financial aid is what keeps me awake at night. Knowingly barring a segment of the society from what could be deemed humanitarian aid, elevates this President and the GOP's ruthless discrimination into plain view and yet, they will continue to get away with the blatant terrorism of an already struggling segment of American society. 

The Trump administration continues to systematically and stealthily pursue harmful tactics against the immigrant population in America. The Coronavirus' path of destruction promises pain, death, and suffering for immigrant families. Obstruction of the 14th amendment right to equal protection guarantees disproportionate harm while yet, the country continues to stockpile tax revenues paid but never used for the very population with the greatest need is illegal, unethical, and can only be described as white-color robbery.

As a U.S. citizen, I intend to use my voice to raise awareness of the painful and tragic situation my family and millions of other immigrant families have endured. In my upcoming book, "Positive Indignation," this and many more grave injustices perpetrated by President Trump, his administration, and the GOP will be exposed. The exclusion of immigrant families from federal aid can only be defined as white-collar robbery. Worse still, the lethal combination of the Coronavirus, discriminatory policies, and xenophobic leadership in America, will go down in history as nothing less than state-sponsored genocide, an ethnic cleansing right here on American soil. The Trump Administration and GOP must be stopped and must be held accountable!

REVISED - 4/8/2020 to add this graphic! Let the data speak for itself.

(1) https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
(2) https://home.kpmg/xx/en/home/insights/2020/03/flash-alert-2020-127.html
(3) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/equal%20protection
(4) https://civilrights.findlaw.com/civil-rights-overview/what-is-discrimination.html
(5) https://www.britannica.com/topic/ethnic-cleansing

(6) https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml