By El Nuevo Día - Don Abraham Rivera, 70, took his son Emanuel Rivera Fuentes, 35, in his arms to place him in the wheelchair and they crossed the avenue, accompanied by the young man's mother, 65, supported by a walker.
They made it to the gates of the Federal Court, where they met Arnold Jay Ruiz Aviles, who needed to hold on to his parents in order to walk from the parking lot.
The families of both young men gathered there to demand that the courts urgently hear the proceedings against the exclusion of island residents from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program.
"It is necessary, urgent, because the longer it takes, the worse it is for them," Don Abraham expressed. "For us to help them with their needs, we need more help, help that they have totally denied us all the time."
"My son doesn't have therapy because we don't have the means to provide it. The government does not provide us with this benefit either. We need equipment that he also needs, which we can't afford out of our own pocket," she added. "So, in this situation, we all urgently need the government to make this decision and approve the benefit for my son and for all those who need it.
On behalf of Rivera Fuentes, attorney Isabel Abislaimán filed a class action lawsuit against the U.S. government and the Social Security Administration in the Federal Court of San Juan, where the case has been stalled for a year.
The same has happened with a similar lawsuit filed on behalf of Ruiz Aviles, as they remain stalled pending the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in another case.
The highest federal court scheduled for November 9 an oral hearing in the case of Luis Vaello Madero, after the Federal Court in San Juan and the Boston Circuit Court of Appeals declared unconstitutional the exclusion of that citizen when he moved from New York to Puerto Rico.
"We are in a hurry. These families are in a hurry," Abislaimán said. "That's why we appeared through this friend-of-the-court brief, so that when the court sees the families, they know it's related to something that's going on in this building."
In her case, Ruiz Aviles received SSI when she lived in the United States, but they had to move to Puerto Rico.
Without that income, his family has seen the financial hardship for the young man to have the therapies he needs.
"It is very urgent, extremely urgent. We provide him with everything we can within our capabilities. Obviously he has multiple needs. We know that ISS is not a Power Ball, but it is a necessary help that will make so many things easier," said Sandra Aviles, Jay's mother.
She detailed that, among other issues, her son needs to review his diagnosis, which was originally made in Staten Island, New York.
"We have to enable a bathroom for him because everything is done on the basis of the regular bathroom. We need a vehicle adapted to his needs. We need him to have the right therapies that would really help him," Avilés added, mentioning, for example, visual and speech therapies. "There are many things and there are new treatments that I know can be covered by this benefit, but are not covered by health insurance."
For Jay's father, Arnold Ruiz, the SSI exclusion is inconceivable. Not only did he point out that for years he paid federal taxes while working in the United States, but Puerto Rico pays more federal taxes than six mainland states.
"The story is that we live in a colony, a territory, it is not enough for us, because we know that in the (Northern) Mariana Islands it is also a territory and there they do receive it, we know that Washington DC, which is not a state either, does receive these benefits there," he said.
"We demand the benefits and rights that correspond to this Puerto Rican population," he added. "That saying that we don't pay taxes in Puerto Rico, that is false, totally false," Ruiz said, referring to one of the arguments of the federal government against extending the benefit to the island.
If the exclusion is eliminated, an estimated 300,000 people would be eligible to receive the benefit on the island. The Fiscal Oversight Board has estimated that this could translate into $1 billion in federal transfers to Puerto Rico annually.
But Don Abraham maintains that time is running out. He thinks, for example, of his daughter Brenda, who also had blindness, epilepsy and schizophrenia. She passed away in March 2020. By that time, she had been denied SSI on several occasions.
"My daughter would have benefited greatly," she lamented. "Now we don't have her with us, but we do claim it because she also had rights, while she was alive, to receive that benefit."
"When one has a child like my son (Emanuel), who urgently needs an economic part to cover his needs, we cannot keep waiting, that is urgent. They have to decide now, because they are postponing and postponing the case. They should stop dragging the matter out, and urgently decide what they are going to decide", he said.