President Joe Biden’s administration has reopened the ability for foreign nationals with a history of using American taxpayer-funded welfare benefits to have a legal path to citizenship under the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
At the beginning of 2020, former President Trump finalized the “public charge”, a federal regulation that “made it less likely for foreign nationals to secure green cards to permanently reside in the United States if they had previously used welfare programs like food stamps, Medicaid, or taxpayer-funded housing programs” reports Breitbart.
However, Biden disbanded the finalized public charge rule immediately after taking office. As a result, Biden blew “open the door for welfare-dependent legal immigration to the United States, for which American taxpayers will ultimately foot the bill” adds Breitbart.
At the end of last week, the USCIS began imposing Biden’s rule: “[Department of Homeland Security] will not consider receipt of noncash benefits (for example, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, public housing, school lunch programs, etc.) other than long-term institutionalization at government expense.”
In 2017, the National Academies of Science reported state and local taxpayers are billed roughly $1,600 each year per immigrant to pay for their welfare. It also revealed immigrant households consume nearly 33 percent more cash welfare than American citizen households. The Center for Immigration Studies found about 63 percent of noncitizen households use at least one form of public welfare, while only 35 percent of American native-born households are on welfare.
As a result, “when Trump first issued the Public Charge rule in 2019, polls found that the policy was overwhelmingly popular with Americans,” Breitbart reports. “About 6 in 10 Americans said they supported ending welfare-dependent legal immigration, including 56 percent of Hispanics and 71 percent of black Americans.”
