Immig red light Don rule nixing green cards over benefits upheld
President Trump got the green light to make it harder for poor immigrants to get a green card.
A divided Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of new “public charge” rules that allow immigrants to be denied permanent resident status if they use food stamps, Medicaid or housing vouchers.
The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision reverses a ruling from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York that had kept in place a nationwide hold on the policy following lawsuits against it.
The court’s four liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, voted to prevent the policy from taking effect.
“This decision will hurt immigrant communities,” Javier Valdes, co-executive director of Make the Road New York, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “The Trump administration’s public charge rules attack our loved ones and neighbors by imposing a racist wealth test on the immigration system. We will continue our fight in the courts to stop this reckless policy in its tracks.”
Immigrants applying for permanent residency must now show they would not be public charges, or burdens to the country.
The new policy significantly expands what factors would be considered to make that determination, and if it is decided that immigrants could potentially become public charges later, that legal residency could be denied. Under the old rules, people who used non-cash benefits, including food stamps and Medicaid, were not considered public charges.
More than 500,000 immigrants apply for green cards each year, and nearly twothirds of those could be subject to the new rules.
The ruling was widely criticized by immigrant advocates.
“The public charge rule is the latest attack in the Trump administration’s war on immigrants,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration expert at Cornell University’s law school. “It makes it harder for working class people to immigrate to or stay in the United States.”
“Today’s disturbing 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court, to temporarily lift the stay on denying green cards to hardworking individuals who contribute to the social fabric and economic growth of our communities, is a clear example of how narrow-minded judges impact our everyday lives,” Lizet Ocampo, political director of People for the American Way, said in a statement.
“Instead of eliminating barriers for immigrant people trying to create better lives, some Supreme Court justices, including Trump’s very own nominees, want to impose a ‘wealth test’ on immigrant families.”
Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security, praised the high court’s order.
Cuccinelli, whose grandparents were dirt-poor Italian immigrants who would likely have been excluded by the rules he is spearheading was widely derided for twisting the words on the Statue of Liberty when he announced the measures last summer.
“Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge,” Cuccinelli said in August.