The Trump administration is proposing to close the door left wide open by former President Joe Biden to migrants who can’t take care of themselves without going on U.S. taxpayer-funded government assistance programs.
In a rule change meant to echo 140 years of federal law before the Biden administration’s open border policies, the Trump administration would more strictly require that migrants seeking green cards show that they can live here without soaking up programs set aside for America’s poor.
The Department of Homeland Security estimates that the proposed change, now out for public comment, could result in federal budget savings of $8.97 billion annually and up to $76.48 billion over 10 years.
The Trump plan would track an 1882 law that excluded from entry “any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.” While “public charge” wasn’t specifically defined, immigration officials were given general guidelines on what to look for when evaluating whether a migrant would require welfare and thus be banned from entry.
According to an analysis from the Center for Immigration Reform, President Donald Trump, in his first administration, sought to define “public charge,” but the courts rejected it. Biden, in 2022, followed up by ordering immigration officials to ignore some benefits migrants get when evaluating their applications to live in the country.
Biden lowered the bar by changing the language to “likely at any time to become a public charge.”
That change led to the green-lighting of many more poor and undereducated immigrants being let into the United States or allowed to stay.
Said the agency in the proposed rule change just published, “DHS believes that the existing [Biden] regulatory framework can lead to irrational outcomes where officers are precluded from finding aliens inadmissible under the public charge ground when it is evident that these aliens are clearly not self-sufficient, which can lead to both more aliens remaining in the United States who are likely at any time to become a public charge and more aliens being dependent on public benefits programs. For example, under the 2022 Final Rule, DHS officers could find aliens who receive multiple forms of means-tested benefits to meet their needs not inadmissible due to the restrictive definition of ‘likely at any time to become a public charge,’ which exclusively focuses on public cash assistance for income maintenance and long-term institutionalization at government expense and ignores the vast majority of public assistance aliens could potentially depend on in the future.”
It added, “By repealing the 2022 regulation, this rule expands immigration officer discretion by allowing them to consider all factors and information they deem relevant.”
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According to CIS, nearly half of all non-citizen households with children are on some sort of welfare, including the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Half of those are illegal immigrants.
“All non-citizens are eligible for WIC, regardless of legal status. Illegal immigrants are not directly eligible for SNAP in most states, but they do receive benefits on behalf of U.S.-born children,” said the group.
