Earlier this month, Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts suggested that undocumented workers, especially those working in the state’s meatpacking facilities, would not be eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines. “You’re supposed to be a legal resident of the country to be able to be working in those plants," Ricketts said at a press conference. “So I do not expect that illegal immigrants will be part of the vaccine with that program.”

According to the Migration Policy Institute, there are over six million immigrant workers working on the frontlines and have been the hardest hit during the pandemic. “Undocumented immigrants are doing a lot of the jobs in terms of physical and manual labor," E. Nathan Harris, JD, managing attorney at Abogados Centro Legal in Alabama, tells Verywell. “And so, if we’re not vaccinating this group of people, we’re still leaving this group open.”

Restricting access to the vaccine for undocumented people would leave many vulnerable to the spread and infection of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. “If you don’t test them or treat them, they will get the disease and spread it,” Ramon Tallaj, MD, doctor and founder of SOMOS Community Care in New York, tells Verywell. 

Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a phased vaccine rollout plan, that includes three phases:

Phase 1a: Healthcare personnel and long-term care facility residents. Phase 1b: Frontline essential workers and people aged 75 and older. Phase 1c: People aged between 65-74 years, people aged 16-64 years with underlying medical conditions, and other essential workers in the fields of transportation, food service, housing, media, and public health professionals.

Immigrants make up a significant share of workers that are considered high priority groups for vaccination. However, whether undocumented workers will be included in this priority list will be determined on a state-by-state basis, according to Harris. “The states are in charge of rolling it out to the people,” Harris says. 

Getting the Vaccine if You’re Undocumented

Currently, states like New York are asking for prospective vaccinators to include the following information when signing up for a vaccine slot:

Date of birthSexWhether you work in the state where you are getting vaccinatedWhether you live in the state where you are getting vaccinatedZipcodeWhether you are an essential worker

In New York, social security and residency status are not requirements when signing up for the COVID-19 vaccine, Tallaj says. Instead, people who wish to get vaccinated must fill in their date of birth, address, race, and whether they are essential workers.

Other states, like Alabama, have set up a scheduling hotline for healthcare workers, people aged 75 years or older, and first responders. To Harris’ knowledge, the state of Alabama is also not checking for social security or residency requirements either, however, it is challenging to secure the vaccine. “Unfortunately, Alabama is last in all 50 states in vaccine distribution," Harris says. “Our politicians and leaders just didn’t get a good plan together.”

So far, priorities for vaccination have been made on the basis of age and occupation rather than citizenship status. 

Although vaccine prioritization is up for determination at the state-level, Harris says that discrimination against certain groups, like undocumented people, “would go against federal discrimination statutes.” 

However, there are still many gray areas when it comes to the constitutionality of excluding groups for vaccination. “Alabama has a great history of discrimination," Harris says. “We’ve seen that in different immigration bills that Alabama has tried to pass and did pass. Famously, HB56, the Beason-Hammon Immigration Act.” This law allows police to legally stop, detain, or arrest if they have reasonable suspicion that a person is undocumented.

So far, Harris has not encountered clients in his own legal practice who have experienced issues where legal status was required to receive the vaccine.

For undocumented people who are healthcare or frontline workers, Harris says they would likely be protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), giving them “quasi-legal or partially legal status.”

To date, more than 24 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the U.S. For equitable vaccine distribution, undocumented workers should be included, Tallaj says. 

Regardless of citizenship status, all people should receive the COVID-19 vaccine because the virus does not pick and choose who will get it, Tallaj says. “We don’t have [residency requirements] in school," he says. “We don’t ask them in churches. We don’t ask anywhere about citizenship or residency. We just have people, human beings.”

The information in this article is current as of the date listed, which means newer information may be available when you read this. For the most recent updates on COVID-19, visit our coronavirus news page.