'Public charge' rule goes into effect Monday

New immigrants face new obstacles to citizenship.

ASAM NEWS

A ruling from the US Supreme Court late Friday clears the way for the Trump administration to make it harder for legal immigrants who are likely to apply for government benefits to get a green card, an important step towards citizenship.

Known by its critics as the wealth test, the policy discourages people seeking legal citizenship from applying for housing assistance, medicaid, food stamps and other public benefits. The court's decision allows it to go into effect Monday, Feb. 24.

The high court lifted a national injunction in January against the public benefit, but Friday it removed the last legal obstacle from its implementation in all 50 states beginning Monday.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a blunt dissenting opinion of the 5-4 split decision blasting the five justices for making its ruling despite a lower court in Illinois being scheduled to take up the Illinois-specific stay this week.

“Today’s decision follows a now-familiar pattern. The Government seeks emergency relief from this Court, asking it to grant a stay where two lower courts have not,” wrote Sotomayor, who voted in the minority. “The Government insists—even though review in a court of appeals is imminent—that it will suffer irreparable harm if this Court does not grant a stay. And the Court yields.

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“It is hard to say what is more troubling: that the Government would seek this extraordinary relief seemingly as a matter of course, or that the Court would grant it,” she concluded.

The White House applauded the decision, according to the Economic Times.

“This final rule will protect hardworking American taxpayers, safeguard welfare programs for truly needy Americans, reduce the Federal deficit, and re-establish the fundamental legal principle that newcomers to our society should be financially self-reliant and not dependent on the largesse of United States taxpayers,” said White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham.

Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren tweeted that she would “roll back” the public-charge policy if elected.

“Millions of children could lose their health care coverage because of the Trump administration’s cruel public charge rule,” Warren said.

Contrary to the popular model minority stereotype, in 2015, eight of 19 Asian American groups had poverty rates higher than the US average thus most likely to use some form of government aid such as food stamps or rental assistance.

Among those subgroups, Pakistani Americans (15.8 per cent), Nepali Americans (23.9 per cent), Bangladeshi Americans (24.2 per cent), and Bhutanese Americans (33.3 per cent) had the highest poverty rates among South Asian American groups, according to the PEW Center.

As much as 69% of the more than 5 million individuals who received a green card over the past five years have at least one negative factor against them under the new rule, and thus might have been denied immigration benefits had the new rule been in effect.

Late last month, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), and Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) joined together to oppose the public charge rule.

“Our immigration system has long been built on the principle that immigrants from all walks of life make our country better. And despite the false claims made to justify this public charge rule, the data shows that immigrants help grow the economy and use fewer government resources than native-born individuals. Regardless, the Trump Administration has spent the past three years creating an immigration system that is cruelly stacked against immigrants of color and the public charge rule is no exception,” the groups stated.

Views From the Edge contributed to this report.