House and Senate Democrats are demanding that President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) rescind a new regulation that will prevent welfare-dependent foreign nationals from resettling in the U.S.
USCIS Director Joe Edlow has issued a final rule that will reinstate Trump’s “public charge” rule from his first term, which enforced Clinton-era laws from 1996 that delegated all financial responsibility to a family member or business sponsor of a foreign national seeking a green card when they had previously used welfare programs.
In February 2021, then-President Joe Biden ended Trump’s public charge rule, revamping welfare-dependent immigration.
House and Senate Democrats are now writing to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Edlow, urging them to halt the public charge rule, claiming it will have a “chilling effect” on migrant communities.
“The chilling effects triggered by expansions of public charge interpretation are well-documented and severe,” the Democrats wrote in the letter:
Federal and academic studies following welfare reform found that confusion and fear led to significant declines in Medicaid participation among otherwise eligible immigrant families and their U.S.-citizen children, with researchers warning that rising uninsurance among these children would worsen health outcomes and increase uncompensated care burdens on safety-net providers. [Emphasis added]
Under the 2019 Trump public charge rule, similar harm reemerged rapidly. Even though many programs were not included in the rule, nearly half (46%) of immigrants in low-income families reported that they or a family member avoided applying for or disenrolled from public benefits due to immigration concerns. [Emphasis added]
That chilling effect extended far beyond the rule’s legal scope, including participation in Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, Head Start, and school meal programs. The consequences were borne disproportionately by U.S. citizen children, who lost access to preventive medical care, early childhood education, and essential nutrition — evidence that fear-driven policy harms American families and public health systems. [Emphasis added]
Among the Democrats who signed the letter are Sens. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Edward Markey (D-MA), Patty Murray (D-WA), Peter Welch (D-VT), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chris Coons (D-DE), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Michael Bennet (D-CO), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR).
Decades of research have shown that legal immigrant households receive more welfare than households headed by American citizens.
The latest analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies found that 54 percent of legal immigrant-headed households used at least one form of welfare. Likewise, almost 60 percent of noncitizen-headed households use at least one form of welfare.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.
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