State Shells Out Another $65 Million ‘Immigrant’ COVID Relief

According to Governor Inslee, and officials with the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) this money will go to persons who were not able to get Federal or other stimulus COVID money; due to their immigration status.

You may recall last August and into the fall, $40 Million in Federal COVID relief money (CARES Act) was set aside for undocumented, or illegal immigration status ag and farmworkers.  At that time Gov. Inslee said the money was from CARES Act funds not tied to immigration status requirements.

State officials said many of these people were not eligible for the Federal stimulus programs due to their immigration situations.

Wednesday, DSHS announced another $65 million has been set aside, and applicants can start to seek those funds.

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The state says this money is targeted towards some 250K people who so far have not been able to obtain or seek any such funding. It will be combined with another $127 million in CARES Act funding from the Feds; which will result in each of these applicants potentially receiving a one-time relief amount of $1,000.

Last August, Inslee and other state officials came under scrutiny over the $40 million in CARES Act money set aside for the farmworkers because at that time time, nursing homes across the state were saying they were not being properly funded for having to provide extra PPE for workers and residents.

The state was supposed to provide at least $29 (on average) per patient, but most homes reported getting maybe 1/3 of that. It was through the Medicaid Matching Program, and even Governor Candidate Loren Culp brought that up a number of times during the campaign in October 2020.

There were allegations the Medicaid CARES money was used for that undocumented relief program in August, but to our knowledge, no investigations were ever started to corroborate those claims.

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