Your Investment at Work

Lifting Our Children Out of Poverty

While we’re hopeful that we have moved past the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we know that Latino families continue to endure its devastating and disproportionate effects. Our families are struggling to pay their bills, put healthy food on the table, and keep a roof over their heads; and, currently, 41% of children living in poverty are Hispanic.

Fortunately, the American Rescue Plan’s expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) program, rolled out by the Biden administration, has the potential to reduce Latino child poverty by 39%, but only if all eligible families enroll. Thanks to your generous support, UnidosUS is ambitiously tackling the barriers that impede families’ participation. For example, many are not aware of the credit, fear government contact, don’t believe they are entitled to the benefits, or make so little money, they don’t file taxes. Since the IRS disburses the CTC dollars, they don’t have a way to get to non-filers, but UnidosUS does!

As a donor, you make it possible for us to:

• Raise awareness of the CTC’s expansion, especially with non-tax filers.
• Disseminate bilingual information and resources through our network of affiliated nonprofit organizations located throughout the country and in hard-to-reach Latino neighborhoods.
• Provide tools to help people without bank accounts access the funds for which they are eligible.
• Inform undocumented families who have children with Social Security Numbers that they qualify and that participation in the program will not affect their immigration status.

To significantly reduce the poverty rate among Latinos, we are coupling these outreach and education efforts with crucial policy and advocacy strategies to ensure maximum enrollment of eligible families in the CTC over the next three years. For example, the CTC expansion includes temporary improvements for the 2021 tax year, such as increasing the eligible child age from 16 to 17 and boosting the maximum credit from $2,000 to $3,600. UnidosUS is advocating with policymakers to make these and other improvements permanent. Additionally, we are working to restore eligibility for children with Tax ID Numbers (ITINs) to the pre-2018 standard. In 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act required kids to have a Social Security Number to qualify for CTC, making one million children newly ineligible, 85% of whom were Hispanic immigrant children.

With your continued commitment to our mission—and in collaboration with our Affiliate Network and community partners working with Latino families—we are laser focused on optimizing this historic opportunity to shift the economic trajectory of our families and lift our children out of poverty. We could not do this without your deeply valued support!

To learn more about the impact of your support, go to unidosus.org.