A recent county program designed to help low-income families may provide certain illegal immigrants in Texas with $500 checks per month for an entire year and a half.
Houston’s Harris County, which involves it, voted 4-1 on Tuesday to approve a trial program that will give people with low incomes monthly payments in cash. The American Rescue Plan Act’s $20.5 million is distributed to 1,400 to 1,600 households under the universal basic income program, referred to as the Uplift Harris program, which will get $500 every month for 18 months.
During the voting, pro-program Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo stated that recipients of the payouts would include those in “the undocumented community” who lived in the “ten worst neighborhoods” in the county.
“Can those without legal status apply? They’re going to if the county lawyer thinks they can. They don’t if the county lawyer decides they can’t. I was informed they could,” Hidalgo stated, adding that there weren’t no restrictions on how the money might be used by the participants.