A recent ad from the National Republican Senatorial Committee went after Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly on immigration and border enforcement. Included in the ad was a statement that the senator “voted … for benefits to illegals.” PolitiFact declared the ad’s claim to be “false,” but the fact-checking outlet’s ruling ignored both recent history and current law. That’s the topic for this edition of Fact Check Check™.
In issuing its ruling, PolitiFact discounted two votes Kelly cast on immigration that were specifically cited in the video by the NRSC, calling them “inconsequential” and “symbolic.”
The first vote was Kelly’s support for a 2021 budget amendment that stripped out a provision designed to prohibit bills that would give stimulus checks to illegal aliens.
The second vote was on an amendment by Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz to the 2021 COVID stimulus bill, which would have prohibited “any alien who is not lawfully present” in the U.S. from receiving relief funds. Kelly voted against the Cruz amendment.
According to PolitiFact, Cruz’s amendment was “symbolic.” The Cruz language would have been redundant, the outlet asserted, because the bill required Social Security numbers for all benefit recipients.
According to Politifact, “none of Kelly’s votes on the issue made it possible for immigrants who were in the country illegally to become eligible for the stimulus checks.”
But that’s not the truth.
PolitiFact’s claim ignored the fact that these immigrants not only are able to get the benefits but already had in previous rounds of COVID stimulus packages.
It is true, as PolitiFact noted, that recipients were required to have valid Social Security numbers to receive a covid stimulus check.
However, it is also true that there are millions of immigrants who have overstayed their visas — meaning they are in country illegally — and have valid Social Security numbers that were assigned when they worked in the U.S. Those numbers will never be voided or rescinded. And it was those numbers that made it possible for undocumented aliens to obtain stimulus checks.
A fact PolitiFact chose to ignore.
The Congressional Research Service has published multiple reports documenting that illegal aliens have been able to use their valid Social Security numbers to claim both refundable tax credits and COVID stimulus checks.
Other fact-checkers were honest about this issue.
CNN published a fact check on the topic more than a year ago, saying it was true that undocumented immigrants would get stimulus checks — as they had before.
And Newsweek actually changed its ruling on the Cruz amendment from “mostly false” to “true” once it was forced to admit that visa-overstayers are, in fact, in the country illegally, and that millions of them would receive benefits.
Our ruling:
Sen. Kelly voted to kill amendments to create enforcement mechanisms designed to keep illegal immigrants from obtaining stimulus checks, but PolitiFact ignored current immigration law in order to rule against the NRSC’s claim.
