President Biden is in favor of providing COVID-19 vaccines to immigrants regardless of their legal status, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday.
Asked during her daily press briefing about a push in Florida to waive a residency requirement for inoculation, Psaki said the president supports getting vaccines into as many arms as possible.
“The more people who are vaccinated, whether they’re undocumented or not, the safer we are as a country, and that’s certainly the president’s point of view,” said Psaki.
Access to the vaccine for illegal immigrants has been a hot-button issue since the shots became available.
Amid the crisis at the US-Mexico border, the Biden administration has faced criticism for lax coronavirus screening processes that have allowed infected migrants to disappear into the general population.
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics current as of Thursday morning, 16.9 percent of adults in the US are fully vaccinated, while 30 percent have received at least one dose.
