Pay attention to this! I don’t know if it would apply to refugees who are eligible for virtually all welfare programs shortly after arrival, but it should. After all, Senator Ted Kennedy and his pals assured Congress in the 1979 debate leading up to the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, that we were not going to be importing poverty with the newly formed Refugee Admissions Program.
As longtime readers know, big businesses, which hire refugees at low wages, expect the refugees to be accessing welfare to supplement their income. So a requirement that they not be using welfare when they adjust their status (like when they apply for citizenship and voting rights!) would be a pretty chilling move on the part of the Administration.
Here is Matthew Vadum writing at the Epoch Times:
Trump Administration May Require Immigrants to Be Able to Support Themselves Financially
A long-anticipated plan to enforce provisions in the nation’s immigration laws that require prospective immigrants to be able to support themselves financially—so-called public-charge provisions—might be introduced by the Trump administration this month.
The proposed regulations, defining the phrase “public charge” under Section 212(a)(4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, may be published this fall, and possibly as early as this month, according to a person close to the rulemaking process of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who requested anonymity.
Left-wing advocacy organizations have attacked any attempt to formally define “public charge” as being cruel and xenophobic, and aimed at drastically curtailing the flow of immigrants to the United States. But the lengths to which the new regulation will go remain to be seen.
Francis Cissna, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency within DHS, discussed a possible draft of the regulation during an Aug. 15 event at the National Press Club in Washington, hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies.
“The goal is not to reduce immigration or, in some diabolical fashion, shut the door on people, family-based immigration, or anything like that,” Cissna said. “The goal is simply to enforce a ground of inadmissibility to this country that’s been on the books for about 100–well, more than 100 years.
Cissna said the public-charge section in the law, a provision that has “hardly ever been enforced,” states that “an alien who in the opinion of the consular officer at the time of application for a visa, or in the opinion of the secretary of Homeland Security at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status—getting a green card—is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible.”
The phrase “likely to become a public charge” has “never been, as far as I know” interpreted in any regulation, he said. There was an attempt in the 1990s to define the expression, but it was dropped.
Cissna said the administration wants to “issue proper regulations open to full public comment, to, at long last, interpret what that means.”
More here.
