Ranjeet Kumar and his wife, Minanshu Jha, learned her immigration status doesn't allow her to apply for a Social Security number.

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SAN FRANCISCO — 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.

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."

When lawmakers decided to send out the checks, ranging from $300 to $600 per adult taxpayer, plus another $300 for each child, they formulated it so only taxpayers who have Social Security numbers would qualify. The rule unintentionally caught many taxpayers who would have qualified for the bonus, except they filed jointly with a spouse whose immigration status doesn't allow him or her to have a Social Security number. Among them are some of the 288,000 troops stationed overseas who may have married a foreigner.

There are also an estimated 1 million legal residents — immigrants with green cards — who are waiting for their spouses' paperwork to be processed, according to Paul Donnelly of Reform the Rebate, a group trying to push Congress to change the rule.

And many of the 600,000 to 800,000 highly skilled immigrants on work visas in the U.S., like Shelat, have found themselves in the same position.

"My friends, my co-workers, everyone is getting this, but not me," said Ranjeet Kumar, a software engineer who has been working in Silicon Valley for eight years.

Members of the Federation for American Immigration Reform lobbied against a version of the bill that didn't require a Social Security number for the rebate, worried about the prospect of illegal immigrants receiving checks.

Spokesman Ira Mehlman said the exclusion of legal immigrants and Americans married to noncitizens was an unintended consequence.