extended to undocumented immigrants residing in the United States. Even though undocumented immigrants in the U.S. pay an estimated $11.74 billion in local and state taxes a year, and despite having income taxes deducted from their paychecks and filing income tax returns (Hill 2017), they are ineligible for federal unemployment aid and stimulus checks. In addition, the Trump administration’s public charge rule allowed the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to discriminate against applicants they deemed likely to become dependent on governmental support. This scared many immigrants from seeking the limited aid for which they were eligible, such as SNAP, because it might lessen their chances of one day adjusting their legal status (Amandolare et al. 2020). The result is economic suffering. The Center for an Urban Future’s study of the population served by the Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation during the COVID-19 pandemic found that 95% of the individuals experiencing food insecurity were undocumented immigrants (Amandolare et al. 2020). It is unconscionable, if unsurprising, that Mario, a 59-year-old man who had worked in the U.S. for 30 years, could not afford to stay home as the pandemic surged. The economic underclass to which undocumented immigrants are consigned means they had no choice but to expose themselves to the pandemic. For Mendoza, the best hope for immigrants is policy change. A popup in the online memorial urges users to “Tell congressional leaders: Immigrants need a pathway to citizenship now.” The stories of the seven undocumented individuals depicted on the installation posters justify this pathway on humanitarian, moral, and emotional grounds. Some, for example, had left their native countries decades ago and, afraid to seek medical help, died before they could reunite with family they had not seen in years. Such long separations from family are not unusual. A Pew Research Study found that in 2012, approximately 62% of undocumented immigrants had lived in the U.S. for a decade or more (Passel et al. 2014). Given the risk to undocumented people of border crossings, such statistics suggest lives uprooted from loved ones. The oral histories in the online memorial are provided by mourning relatives in the United States. They speak of the deceased immigrants’ longing to return to their native land and detail the compounding effects of economic, legal, emotional, and health stressors. To such family members, the undocumented immigrants are not statistics, economic contributors, or policy arguments. They are unique, loved people who were committed to their families and communities. Visually, too, Mendoza wanted to honor their individuality: “Their favorite singers sometimes appear on the lyrics of the halo, their favorite flowers, their favorite color, the areas that they were from, trying to find specific textures that were from those areas” (Sanchez 2021). 23
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