How many Filipinos will be affected by Trump’s public charge rule?

DEPORTATION and denying admission under the Obama and Trump administrations is a case of the bark being worse than the bite.

In the 2016 campaign trail. President Donald Trump drew huge crowds barking that he would “deport thousands of illegal immigrants... on day one.”

Claiming that Mexico was exporting drugs, criminals, rapists to the United States, candidate Trump constantly bellowed “Day one, my first hour in office, those people are gone.”

“They’re going to be gone. It will be over. They’re going out. They’re going out fast,” he said.

A year into his administration, a total of 295,364 aliens were removed and 100,754 returned.

The Obama administration had more bite in the deportation category than Mr. Trump.

More aliens were removed and deported in the first year of President Barack Obama: 387,242 removals and 476,405 returned.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) differentiates aliens removed and those returned.

Removals are the compulsory and confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable alien out of the US based on an order of removal. An alien who is removed has administrative or criminal consequences placed on subsequent reentry owing to the fact of the removal.

Essentially, these are aliens who underwent immigration court proceedings.

On the other hand, returned aliens are those confirmed inadmissible or deportable while attempting to enter the US.

Bark and bite

The Democratic and Republican administrations before Presidents Obama and Trump deported more: 12 million under Bill Clinton and 10 million under George W. Bush, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

The same report says fewer than 5 million were deported under Obama.

In 2018, the Pew Research Center published “the most recent year for which complete data is available — CBP and ICE together” showing “337,287 removals of unauthorized immigrants, a 17-percent increase from the previous year, according to the Department of Homeland Security. But removals remained below the levels recorded during much of the Obama administration, including a three-year period between fiscal 2012 and 2014 when there were more than 400,000 per year.”

Explaining the perception from the numbers comparison that the Obama administration was more anti- immigrant than the Trump government (as perceived by immigrant advocacy groups), Cecilia

Muñoz, a top domestic policy adviser to Obama then who is now with the liberal New America Foundation, was quoted to have said in a July 13, 2019 phone interview:

“A straight numbers- by- numbers comparison doesn’t provide an accurate picture of what was going on in the administration...” Obama prioritized deporting people convicted of serious crimes and recent arrivals who had no criminal records. “Trump, by contrast,” Muñoz said, “focused instead on immigrants who have been in the US for 20 years and have families.”

The recurring announcements, proclamations and executive orders aimed at immigrant families, including abolition of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), is likened to a campaign of terror.

Muñoz said people are “scared of sending their children to schools... which has a very, very different dynamic.”

Mr. Trump’s order canceling DACA had been ruled illegal by a federal court, but the Trump administration announced on July 28, 2020 that “it would thoroughly reconsider DACA. In the meantime, the government would not accept any new applications from young people who want to qualify, and it would only renew current DACA recipients for one year, down from two years.”

The barking continues, this time in the public charge domain – immigrant visa applicants at consular posts and those seeking to adjust their status to permanent residents in the US.

Public charge, welfare cheats

As early as the colonial period, state and federal governments prohibited the immigration of individuals who might become public charges, those “deemed likely to become dependent on public institutions such as poorhouses.”

However, it was only in 1882 when the first general federal immigration statute specified who should be excluded ( inadmissible): “any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.” In that year, a federal immigration head- tax was imposed “to defray the cost of regulating immigration and to care for immigrants who arrived in the US.”

Throughout the 20th century, there has been no consensus on how “public charge” should be defined. As succeeding administrations grapple with the definition and subsequent deportation, the Supreme Court ruled in 1915 that a person “likely to be a public charge (LPC) should be made using the personal characteristics of the aliens applying for admission rather than external factors such as the local economic conditions at the aliens’ intended destinations.”

Since then, this has been the guiding principle when removing or deporting a person under this specific provision Section 212(a)(4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

In 1996, President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) into law imposing new restrictions on aliens’ eligibility for many federal, state, and local public benefits.

A related law in the same year. the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) created a new, legally enforceable affidavit of support requirement for immigrants who could not show a work history or offer of employment that demonstrated their capability to maintain an income above the poverty level.

Implementation at the agency levels – the legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service ( INS,, now USCIS) and the Department of State – was inconsistent leading to a proposed regulation formally defining “public charge” setting the rules on inadmissibility.

While the INS policies and guidance used the “totality of circumstances” rule to determine if a visa or adjustment of status applicant is “likely to be a public charge.”

The following is a timeline of the most recent attempt by the Uscis/ DHS on its latest attempt to finally have a definition of PLC.

2018

– January 3 — The Department of State ( DOS) revises the Foreign Affairs Manual on public charge. – October 10 — Department of Homeland Security ( DHS) publishes a proposed rule.

2019

– August 14 — DHS publishes final rule intended to become effective October 16. Earlier, DOS published its final rule version October 11, but was not implemented while a new form is being created for the final rule. – October 11 to 14 — Multiple district/federal courts issues preliminary injunctions of the final rule.

2020

–

January 27 — US Supreme

Court allows DHS final rule take effect, except in Illinois. – February 20 — DOS announces start of applying the new rule. – February 21 — US Supreme Court allows USCIS final rule in Illinois. – February 24 — DHS and DOS final rule goes into effect everywhere. – July 29 — Federal court issues injunction of the rule due to national emergency brought about by Covid- 19. DOS subsequently announces it will comply with the July court injunction. – August 12 — Second Circuit Court ( 2nd Cir. Ct.) limits injunction coverage to New York, Connecticut and Vermont. – September 11 — 2nd Cir. Ct. lifts the July injunction allowing implementation of the final rule nationwide and worldwide. – October 2 — DHS proposes a rule requiring petitioners/. sponsors to submit the most recent three years of credit reports, credit scores, certified copies of tax returns. The rule was published in the Federal Register. Public comments for or against the proposed rule ends Nov. 2, 2020.

PH immigrant visa applicants affected?

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In November 2019, the US State Department reported that there were 291,392 immigrantvisa applicants from the Philippines. The family- sponsored categories ( where visa applicants are required to submit an affidavit of support) are broken down as follows: F1 ( over 21, unmarried sons/ daughters of US citizens ( USCs), 15,283; F2A ( psouses/ minor children of green card holders ( GCHs), 5,586; F2B ( over 21, unmarried sons/ daughters of GCHs, 41,892; F3 ( married sons/ daughters of USCs) 112,514; and F4 ( adult brothers and sisters of USCs), 102,721.

Based on the average number of family- sponsored applicants issued visas at the US embassy in Manila ( 1,654), another 20,000 visa applicants from the Philippines would have been added by November this year.

By that time, the winner of the US presidential election would have been known. Whether Mr. Trump is reelected or forced to leave the US to live in another country ( as he claims), the proposed rule requiring petitioners and sponsors to submit threeyears of their tax information and credit reports would have been published.

Yet, give credit where credit is due. The Trump administration is more bark than bite on immigrant deportation and exclusion compared with his predecessor.