{"id":17654,"date":"2018-09-26T09:00:45","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T13:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-immigrationreform.pantheonsite.io\/?p=17654"},"modified":"2018-12-28T09:49:28","modified_gmt":"2018-12-28T14:49:28","slug":"grossly-mischaracterizing-the-public-charge-proposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2018\/09\/26\/grossly-mischaracterizing-the-public-charge-proposal\/","title":{"rendered":"Grossly Mischaracterizing the Public Charge Proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"
Unsurprisingly, the stridently pro-illegal-alien Los Angeles Times<\/em><\/a> is criticizing the Trump administration\u2019s proposed new public charge rule. But the \u00a0Times<\/em> mischaracterizes<\/a> the proposed rule, stating that government officials would now have, \u201cbroad power to reject people whom they believe might someday in the future tap government programs for financial support.\u201d<\/p>\n In reality, immigration officers already have the authority to reject any aliens who appear to be unable to support themselves or their dependents. And they have, since the birth of the Republic. The first public charge laws were enacted by the Massachusetts legislature when the Bay State was still a colony.\u00a0 And the first comprehensive federal immigration law\u2014enacted by Congress on August 3, 1882\u2014 included a bar against the admission of \u201cany person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.\u201d In fact, until the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, most admissibility determinations based on an alien\u2019s ability to earn a living in the United States.<\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s rule would simply clarify<\/a> longstanding law, which already allows:<\/p>\n But according to the \u00a0Times<\/em>, \u201cThese are unnecessarily strict and hard-hearted rules aimed at solving a problem that social scientists say doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d The newspaper maintains that, \u201cClinton-era welfare reforms already put major social service programs out of reach for most legal immigrants until they\u2019ve been here for five years; undocumented immigrants are barred from nearly all public support.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, that\u2019s a wildly inaccurate claim. While the Clinton administration allegedly pushed \u201cdraconian\u201d welfare reforms, it also administratively redefined \u201cpublic charge\u201d in order to ensure that most lawful immigrants using public benefits would not be considered dependent on taxpayer funded benefits. In turn, the Obama administration further broadened the Clinton-era guidelines, making even more benefits available to foreigners who never paid into our social safety net. And these actions imposed a heavy financial burden<\/a> American taxpayers still shoulder to this day.<\/p>\n In fact, according to a study<\/a> conducted by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), over half of all immigrant-led households currently use at least one welfare program. Meanwhile, only\u00a0 30 percent of native-headed households use at least one welfare program.<\/p>\n And those figures don\u2019t represent short-term usage of a program just to get through tough times, as the LA Times<\/em> and other alien-advocates would have you believe. The same CIS study found that, after 20 years in the United States, 48 percent of households headed by immigrants still continue to access at least one welfare program.<\/p>\n According to data from the Census Bureau\u2019s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) 7.5 million immigrants will be enrolled in Medicaid by 2030 \u2013 provided that immigration rates remain stable, rather than rising. Given the already weak state of the Medicaid program, that would appear to be an unsupportable burden.<\/p>\n Rather than \u201chard-hearted rules aimed at solving a problem that social scientists say doesn\u2019t exist,\u201d the Trump administration\u2019s efforts would seem to be a common sense<\/a> effort reduce the burden imposed on taxpayers by unchecked mass migration. But common sense seems to be in very short supply at the LA Times<\/em>. \n