Green-card rules take effect; groups raise concerns
WASHINGTON — As new rules took effect Monday that disqualify more people from green cards if they use government benefits, several immigration advocates said that droves of migrants, including citizens and legal residents, have dropped social services out of fear they will be kicked out of the U.S.
Before Monday, migrants were disqualified from permanent resident status only if they failed to demonstrate a household income above 125% of the federal poverty line, a threshold set by Congress. Now, immigration officials will weigh dozens of factors, such as age, health, language skills, credit score and insurance as well as whether an applicant has previously used public benefits, to determine if the applicant is likely to use them in the future.
One factor that could also count against an applicant is the action the person is undertaking: applying for a green card. Applying for the legal status is one of the negative factors that immigration officials could use to determine whether someone will be a public charge, a Catch-22 that has been a key subject of criticism from immigration advocates.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Saturday that the changes will “reestablish the fundamental legal principle that newcomers to our society should be financially self-reliant and not dependent on the largess of United States taxpayers.”
Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy Homeland Security Department secretary, said Monday on Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends that the move is “not a moral judgment on individuals, it is an economic one.”
He said the government expects “people seeking to be long-term immigrants here, and maybe join us as citizens, will be able to stand on their own two feet.” He said the rules were “a major priority for the president.”
Immigration advocates
around the U.S., meanwhile, gathered Monday to discuss and criticize the government’s policy.
Participants at a New York City roundtable said that in anticipation of the changes, neighborhoods with higher migrant populations had seen enrollment declines in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. They also urged migrants to get legal advice on how they may be affected.
In Boston, the Rev. Dieufort Fleurissaint said some Haitian migrants worry that accepting benefits could keep their relatives from coming to the U.S.
Bethany Li, of Greater Boston Legal Services, said Chinese families are passing on benefits under the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, which are not covered by the new rules.
The guidelines that aim to determine whether migrants seeking legal residency may become a government burden are part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to reduce immigration, particularly among poorer people.
The rules, which critics say amount to a “wealth test,” were set to take effect in October but were delayed by legal challenges alleging a violation of due process under the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court last month cleared the way for the Trump administration to move forward while the rules were litigated in the courts.
In 5-4 vote Friday, the high court sided with the Trump administration by lifting a last injunction covering just Illinois. Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a blistering dissent, criticizing the administration for quickly turning to the Supreme Court after facing losses in lower courts. She suggested that her conservative colleagues handled the litigation inconsistently in their desire to give Trump a victory.
DROPPING SERVICES
The effect on migrant communities recalls the time when millions of refugees dumped social services during the welfare changes of the 1990s, even though the legislation that prompted the cuts explicitly exempted them.
Nazanin Ash, Washington-based vice president for global policy and advocacy for the nonprofit International Rescue Committee, pointed to research showing that 37% of refugees exempted from the Bill Clinton-era changes in welfare benefits had dropped the food stamps they were entitled to.
Ash said the Trump administration rules would likely cause similar hardships for migrants who contribute to the American economy.
“To call them a burden on society is factually incorrect,” she said.
The Migration Policy Institute said in an August policy paper that it expects that “a significant share” of the nearly 23 million noncitizens and U.S. citizens in migrant families who use public benefits will drop them.
Pastor Antonio Velasquez said that before the Trump administration announced a crackdown on migrants using government social services, people lined up before sunrise outside a state office in a largely Hispanic Phoenix neighborhood to sign up for food stamps and Medicaid.
“You had to arrive at 3 in the morning, and it might take you until the end of the day,” he said, pointing behind the office in the Maryvale neighborhood to show how long the lines got.
But no one lined up one recent weekday morning, and there were just a handful of people inside.
“This will bring more poverty, more homeless, more illness,” said Velasquez, a wellknown leader among Spanish-speaking migrants in the Phoenix area.
Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, said the guidelines are so complicated that there have even been reports of parents dropping their kids’ free school lunches, which are not affected.
Gelatt noted that the rules apply only to social services used after Monday and do not affect citizens or most green card-holders. Refugees vetted by federal agencies before their arrival, as well as people who obtain asylum, are not affected.
The guidelines don’t apply to many programs for children and pregnant and postnatal women, including Head Start early-childhood education and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.
Nevertheless, Stephanie Santiago, who manages two Phoenix-area clinics for the nonprofit Mountain Park Health Center, said that during the last three months of 2019, she suddenly saw scores of migrants drop those and other benefits.
“People are very scared about the rules,” Santiago said. “The sad thing is that they even drop the services their U.S. citizen kids qualify for. A lot of these kids are going to school sick or their parents are paying out of pocket for services they should get for free.”
Cynthia Aragon, outreach coordinator for the nonprofit Helping Families in Need in Phoenix, said that because of the confusion, she is steering people to private sources of aid, such as food banks and church-run clinics.
“I think people will start applying for government services again after it becomes clearer how things are going to work,” Aragon said. “In the meantime, we tell immigrants to look for some of the other resources out there and don’t feel like a victim.”
IMMIGRATION FALLS
Even before the new rules, President Donald Trump’s immigration policies — including travel bans, visa restrictions, refugee caps and asylum changes — had already had an effect on the immigration system. Legal immigration has fallen, and experts project that a steeper drop is looming.
“In an administration that’s been perceived to be haphazard, on immigration they’ve been extremely consistent and barreling forward,” said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group.
The number of people who obtained lawful permanent residence, besides refugees who entered the United States in previous years, declined to 940,877 in fiscal 2018 from 1,063,289 in fiscal 2016, according to an analysis of government data by the National Foundation for American Policy.
Although the data provides only a glimpse of the effects of Trump’s agenda, immigration experts said coming policies will amplify those effects. A report released Monday by the foundation projected a 30% plunge in legal immigration by 2021.