GOP Front Burner Issue: Immigration Reform at any Cost No Matter Just Stop Biden

 

Initial Outlook Not Good: Will Get Ugly

Another old GOP move to hurt people in need – this headline from the Washington Examiner:

“Loyal Trump Republican moves to cut off all noncitizens from government assistance programs”

No matter what Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI) says or believes these facts cannot be denied yet he seems to forget them even though they are a matter of law today:

Grothman introduced (with only four GOP co-sponsors and no DEMs) his so-called “Smarter Plan for Immigrant Welfare” a bill to expand guidelines for eligibility for any kind of welfare or government assistance.

The Facts:

1.  Since 1996, when the last major welfare legislation was passed, only immigrants who have green cards, or who were legal permanent residents, were allowed to request any public assistance.

2.  Also, existing laws do not allow immigrants visiting the United States on any variety of visas to apply for welfare through the cash assistance program known as the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for disabled people.

3.  For other programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP – for food stamps), and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), recipients generally must be green card holders.

4.  The 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., including people protected from deportation by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, are all ineligible for all four programs.

5.  International students and agricultural workers, among a plethora of others in the U.S. on a temporary legal basis, are also ineligible.

6.  Medicaid is also not available to millions of illegal immigrants, just for green card holders and people protected from deportation.

The only programs that do apply to everyone are nutrition programs for children in school because all children, regardless of immigration status, must be enrolled in schools. 

Also, women who are pregnant, breastfeeding, and recovering from childbirth, as well as infants and children up to age five, will receive limited amounts of assistance for food. 

Key Summary: All this means that anyone who evades getting caught while sneaking in over our borders or someone who overstays their visa(s) cannot apply for these programs.

A study by a Washington-based immigration group, the “Center for Immigration Studies” states that nearly twice as many noncitizen households in the U.S. relied on some sort of government assistance in 2014 compared to American citizen households. More scare tactics, too.

Grothman claims that President Biden’s push to give a pathway to citizenship to 11 million illegal immigrants would prompt “many to use their new legal status to apply for welfare benefits and not work.” 

NOTE: All documented evidence proves that line of GOP thinking is patently false.

Randy Capps, U.S. programs research director at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, DC, says that it is a popular misconception of the many benefits programs, adding: “The reality is that a large majority of people receiving these programs, SNAP and Medicaid, are working. SNAP, this supplemental assistance, it's a little bit of money for additional food. It can be as little as like $10 a month. It definitely can't replace income from work. It’s not unemployment insurance. Regarding Medicaid:  many people who work in this country do not get health insurance through their  employers. And that's especially more true among immigrants. The uninsured rate for immigrants is much higher than it is for the general public.”

Key related article here from the NY TIMES on this same subject:  Congressional Democrats roll out Biden’s immigration plan, offering an eight-year path to citizenship.

My 2 cents: Rep Grothman’s (R-WI) quote shows the raw politics of his issue – which is the worst part of any policy debate or law change, etc.

Republicans seem to act like their ancestors came to the U.S. and were well prepared to make it on their own – which is totally untrue – some came with only the clothes on their back.

Grothman concluded: “Despite its low chances of moving forward, my focus is keeping immigration on Republicans' minds.”

That is the problem and we must counter the GOP’s persistent and harsh disinformation about immigration policy. 

Some changes are surely needed for strong and right and just immigration policy, but not the kind of harsh GOP policies that Grothman and others always push mostly based lies and fear, and have for decades.

Thanks for stopping by.