Im-Politic: Trump’s Draft Immigrant Welfare-Use Curbs are Anything but Radical

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Christopher Ingraham, food stamps, healthcare, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, legal immigration, Los Angeles Times, public assistance, refugees, Statue of Liberty, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Trump, Washington Post, welfare

So much talk these days about immigrants’ welfare use in the United States. Specifically, so much of it due to the Trump administration’s consideration of supposedly cruel and radical proposals to (1) deny admission into the United States anyone deemed likely to become a user of welfare programs, and (2) to deport even many legal immigrants benefiting from welfare. And so little reporting that this intention has been the law of the land for decades – but that the statutes have been written in utterly ludicrous ways.

The completely unjustified furor began when the Washington Post obtained a draft Trump administration Executive Order mandating the immigrant welfare crackdown. In the words of Post reporter Christopher Ingraham,

“Such a move would represent a departure from current practice but would be consistent with the goals of Trump advisers Stephen K. Bannon and Stephen Miller, who, in the words of the Los Angeles Times, ‘see themselves as launching a radical experiment to fundamentally transform how the U.S. decides who is allowed into the country.’”

Let’s leave aside for the moment the peculiarity of one journalist using others as sources of unassailable expertise. The more important point is that Ingraham (and his editors) briefly noted that “Strict eligibility guidelines…prevent many immigrants from receiving federal aid” – but are basing their conclusion about a radical break from the present on the completely specious distinction that American immigration law has been drawing between forms of public assistance classified as “cash welfare” and those placed in an (Orwellian) “non-cash” category.

Here’s how current American law is described by an organization dedicated to “Helping low-income individuals solve legal problems.” (And with its services offered in no less than 27 foreign languages, immigrants are plainly a high priority.)

“Depending on your immigration status, the Department of Homeland Security (‘DHS’) and State Department consular officers can deny your application to become a permanent resident, or refuse to let you enter or re-enter the U.S., if they think you will not be able to support yourself without these benefits in the future.” (See this link.)

As WashingtonLawHelp explains, the government’s present focus is identifying (and excluding) anyone “who cannot support themselves and who [would] depend on cash welfare for their income.” But what the emphasis on “cash welfare” leaves out are those numerous and massive programs that do not involve outright cash payments – e.g., food stamps, and medical and housing benefits.

This bizarre loophole is what the Trump Order seeks to close. For it would add these programs to the roster of types of assistance whose receipt would legally turn an individual and/or their family into the kind of actual or potential “public charge” that current immigration law (only partly) aims to exclude from legal U.S. residence.

(For those of you now fearing that the Trump draft proposals would betray in an unprecedented manner the iconic and admirable Statue of Liberty commitment to America as a haven for the world’s “poor” and those “yearning to breathe free,” you can relax. These measures – like current law – would apply only to immigrants, not to those applying for entry as refugees, asylum seekers, or human trafficking victims.)   

So a big immigration policy change is definitely being contemplated. And it would certainly be dramatic, for Ingraham’s article makes clear that such non-cash assistance is the predominant type used by immigrants. But does the change really qualify as radical? Or even significant in a logical sense? If so, why? Because American taxpayers ultimately aren’t as completely on the hook for these so-called non-cash benefits as for cash benefits? What baloney.

So here are two descriptions for the possible change that actually deserve to become the standards: “Commonsensical” and “long overdue.”

Im-Politic: How Trump Can Clean Up His (Needless) Immigration Mess

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2016 election, amnesty, anchor children, border security, deportation, Donald Trump, E-Verify, Hillary Clinton, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, public assistance, Sanctuary Cities

Donald Trump has been getting it from all sides because of his recent, contradictory statements on immigration policy, and whatever the motives, the criticisms of the Republican presidential candidate are richly deserved for one fundamental reason: You don’t need to be an Open Borders fan or a total deportation hardliner to recognize that, with just over two months left till Election Day, Trump should at least have the main details of his approach down cold. It’s painfully clear that he doesn’t.

Even worse, if you’re a Trump supporter, the core precepts of a sensible and politically appealing alternative to current immigration policy – and to the even more permissive version being pushed by his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton – are anything but rocket science. And this description even applies to policies for dealing with the nation’s current illegal immigrant population, the dimension of immigration reform widely thought to present policymakers with their most difficult, even agonizing, choices, and that’s given Trump the greatest difficulty over the last week.

Trump has announced that he’ll be giving a speech on immigration this Wednesday, and if he has any hope of clarifying his views in a way likely to win more votes than it loses, here’s what he’ll have to do.

To start, Trump needs to remember that the kind of mass deportation he’s referred to in TV interviews was not part of the immigration blueprint he released a year ago – and for very good reasons. Surely at one point he and his team recognized the logistical nightmare, budget-busting costs, and public relations disaster this idea entailed.

Then the candidate needs to remember that he and his team recognized that the nation is by no means therefore stuck with the various versions of soft or quasi-amnesties with which he’s flirted in recent days. For that immigration blueprint made a compelling, though only partial and implicit, case for addressing the great majority of the illegal population that has been otherwise law-abiding through attrition. That is, rather than trying actively to kick millions of men, women, and children out of he country, Washington would concentrate on steadily reducing this population by turning off or weakening the two big magnets collectively responsible for their presence.

The first of course concerns jobs, and the Trump blueprint identifies most of the answer – mandating nation-wide use by employers of the E-verify system, a computerized means of identifying job applicants residing in America without proper authorization. As I’ve reported, where it has been used, E-verify boasts an outstanding record of success. And its effectiveness could be supercharged by requiring that businesses pay truly painful penalties for violations.

The second big magnet encompasses various kinds of public assistance currently being extended to illegal immigrants, but the Trump blueprint covered only some of the bases. Yes, de-funding sanctuary cities would help bring to an end the extra layer of legal protection perversely provided throughout the country even for criminal aliens. But the statement should have also expressly prohibited any state from providing driver’s licenses and public college tuition benefits for illegals.

Even these measures would leave intact two big illegal immigrant drains on the public purse – their families’ use of hospital emergency rooms and public schools, and their eligibility for and use of transfer payments and entitlement programs like Obamacare (especially by “anchor children,” who are born in the United States and thus automatically enjoy full citizenship rights). The Trump blueprint glosses over the former issue and would handle the latter by ending birthright citizenship.

In principle, I support preventing illegals from trying to strengthen their legal status in America by creating these human faits accompli. But I also foresee a huge constitutional fight that would take years at best to resolve. As a result, it makes the most sense to rely mainly on turning off the jobs magnet in order to persuade illegals to leave the United States. Clearly, many would remain, counting on their ability to receive public assistance via the anchor children route. But using an E-Verify-type system to crack down on welfare use gained through falsified documents would pare illegals’ numbers further. And the new barriers to finding American jobs would help prevent future surges in their ranks – especially if the U.S. economy’s growth picked up enough to boost employment opportunities greatly.

Obviously, this attrition strategy wouldn’t placate either extreme on the spectrum of immigration policy views. But along with the serious border enforcement Trump has consistently promised, it would achieve the crucial aims of bringing the illegals population down to much more economically manageable levels, and keeping it there. And attrition would do so in the “fair” and “humane” way that Trump understands a critical mass of American voters – rightly – are seeking.