When Maulit Shelat heard about the Bush administration’s plan to pump up the economy by sending out stimulus checks, he sat down with his wife and drew up a list of priorities: first up, remodeling the bathroom.

But Shelat is married to a foreigner who still hasn’t completed the often years-long process that allows her to apply for a Social Security number. Her not having that number makes even him ineligible for the tax rebate checks that started going out last week because they filed jointly.

He is among an estimated hundreds of thousands of taxpayers — from legal immigrants to soldiers based abroad — who won’t be getting a share of the stimulus package because of a provision aimed at preventing illegal immigrants from getting rebates.

“I would have fed this economy as well,” said Shelat, an Indian chemical engineer living with his wife and two children in the Buffalo, N.Y.-area. “We live within this economy, work, pay taxes, do everything by the book. Whatever the reasons for giving this economic stimulus package, they apply to us as well.”

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