WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is not just cracking down on illegal immigration. He’s also looking to curb legal immigration to the U.S. His latest attempt to do that is a new rule that would restrict green cards for immigrants who rely on public assistance.
What You Need To Know
The Trump administration is reviving the so-called public charge policy that would deny permanent legal status to any immigrant who received federal benefits
Federal law already bars immigrants from obtaining green cards if they’re likely to be dependent on the government
Advocates said the move ends up discouraging immigrant families from accepting benefits, including families with U.S. citizen children
In a controversial twist on the Statue of Liberty’s iconic poem, Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during President Donald Trump’s first term, said in 2019, “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.”
Cuccinelli was promoting a so-called public charge policy that would deny permanent legal status to any immigrant who received federal benefits, such as food stamps, Medicaid, or housing vouchers. Now in President Trump’s second term, the administration is looking to revive the policy once again after President Joe Biden rolled it back.
The Trump administration formally introduced the new regulation this week. It would grant immigration officers broad discretion to deny green cards to people who use federal benefits, arguing that the Biden administration’s provisions “straightjacket DHS officers’ ability to make public charge inadmissibility determinations.”
The policy does not specify which federal programs would be deemed a public charge.
“While the policy actually does very little itself, it does massive collateral damage,” said Leo Cuello, a research professor at Georgetown University. “Whoever’s making that decision, they just get to decide based on whatever they feel like looking at everything they want to look at, and so it creates huge potential for biases and inconsistent application of the rules because they have literally erased the rules.”
The Department of Homeland Security wrote on social media that under President Trump, “DHS is restoring the basic principle that immigrants must be able to support themselves. We are reaffirming the requirement of self-reliance, protecting public resources, and ending policies that encouraged dependency on hard-working American taxpayers.”
Federal law already bars immigrants from obtaining green cards if they’re likely to be dependent on the government.
Texas advocates said the move ends up discouraging immigrant families from accepting benefits, including families with U.S. citizen children who are eligible for certain programs. Texas already has the highest uninsured rate for children in the U.S.
Bob Sanborn, executive director of the Texas-based nonprofit Children at Risk, said he has “absolutely” seen Texas families shy away from these benefits because of the public charge policy.
“When you’re an immigrant to the country, you want to do everything right,” Sanborn said.
“It puts a scare like, should we not do anything because we don’t want to jeopardize anyone in our extended family’s ability to get citizenship,” Sanborn said. “Already in the state of Texas, Latinos claim very few benefits, and so… this is the difference between a child being successful or a child not being hungry. Some of these benefits, it’s really scary for us because we want every child to really be successful.”
The new rule is set to go into effect on Sept. 18.