Blessed are the mean-spirited for Trump will reward them
WASHINGTON » How can we reduce the number of abortions in the United States? One way is to make sure that women are confident they’ll have medical coverage throughout their pregnancies and after.
And how can we encourage people to work? Bymaking work pay, which is why Republicans and Democrats have supported the Earned Income Tax Credit, known as the EITC, which tops off the pay of low-income employees. Food stamps help feed low-income working families.
These are pro-life, pro-work and pro-family policies.
But the Trump administration is pondering a regulation that people in all these camps should find appalling. This bureaucratic maneuver is directed against immigrants who are in full compliance with our statutes.
What the Trumpians have in mind is a radical change in the interpretation of who is defined as a “public charge” in our immigration law.
An 1882 act excluded any immigrant “unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.” In 1891, Congress called for deporting “any alien who becomes a public charge within one year after his arrival in the United States from causes existing prior to his landing therein.”
Until now, administrations of both parties read the language in ways that ought to seem reasonable to all sides of the immigration debate.
Robert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, explained in a paper released on Tuesday that the factors used in determining whether an immigrant is a “public charge” include “whether the individual is dependent for over half of his or her income on cash assistance or is receiving long-term care through Medicaid.” (Greenstein’s emphasis.)
The proposal being considered, he said, would “jeopardize the immigration status of substantial numbers of legal immigrants” by vastly expanding the list of benefits that could make them “public charges.” It would now include the EITC, the low-income component of the Child Tax Credit, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, health insurance subsidies, the Women, Infants and Children program, or food stamps.
According to the Urban Institute, 91 percent of immigrants’ children are U. S. citizens. But immigrant parents might be reluctant to access benefits they’re entitled to because doing so could put their own status here in danger.
In fact, the mere leaking of these potential revisions has already had this chilling effect.
Oh, and by the way, the only tax breaks the rule targets are those that help our poorest immigrant families.
“It’s about so much more than immigration,” said Ashley Feasley of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. This “really should be seen as a life issue.”
If you are pro-life, please call your White House friends and tell them that withdrawing support for mothers pushes women more to seek abortion.
And if you are a Christian, do you want to tell the citizenchildren of immigrants that political posturing and nativist sentiments in your party is more important than their getting food or health care? Scripture doesn’t tell us: Blessed are the mean-spirited.
The draft of this rule is so unjustly punitive toward newcomers trying to do right — by their families and our laws — that it ought to draw us away from our usual political battle stations.
Unless, of course, political posturing is the only thing that matters now. In which case: God have mercy on us.