20 attorneys general sue to keep health centers, Head Start and other programs open to all

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Hey kids -- what's your immigration status?

20 state attorneys general (including DC’s) have sued the Dept. of Justice, Dept. of Health and Human Services, Dept. of Education and Dept. of Labor seeking to void a series of orders issued in mid-July that abruptly ended a host of social programs’ exemptions from a federal ban on serving broad categories of immigrants, both lawfully present and undocumented. The ban was established by the so-called Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (PRWORA), enacted in 1996.

The complaint documents that programs decreed this month to have suddenly lost their exemption from PRWORA’s limiting of benefit eligibility to citizens and “qualified aliens” have been excepted based on rules put in place as soon as PRWORA was enacted in 1996. Many exempted programs, such as the community health center, drug treatment, and Head Start programs, are premised on not checking beneficiaries’ immigration status, and some (e.g., the CHCs) are required by statute not to check immigration status. 

Trump admin newly excludes many immigrants from a host of benefits

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CHC in Davenport, Iowa

Over the weekend, I learned third-hand that employees at a network of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) in New Jersey had been told by management that the feds had forbidden them to treat undocumented immigrants.

That conclusion may be somewhat premature, but it’s grounded in abrupt and sweeping administrative action. In its latest barbaric assault on immigrants, the Trump administration has issued a series of orders banning access to most of the narrow range of federally funded benefits and programs not already off-limits to the undocumented - or to the many categories of lawfully present immigrants who are not “qualified aliens” (i.e., green card card holders, refugees, asylees and a few other categories*).

On July 10, three federal agencies — HHS, DOL and Education — issued notices (here is HHS’s) cutting off access for most non-green-card-holding immigrants to various benefits and services that had been excepted from a sweeping ban established in 1996. HHS’s list of benefits that will lose excepted status is as follows: 

A small refuge from the Trump administration's public charge cruelty

The Trump administration's proposed new rule jeopardizing the immigration status of legally present noncitiizens who tap non-cash benefits like Medicaid or food stamps is a travesty -- of public health, economics and human rights. If finalized, it will kill people by denying them medical care, harm the life prospects of millions of children, and put us one more long step down the road toward discriminatory treatment of a class of people demonized by the federal government. About 27 million people who are noncitizens themselves or live in a family including a noncitizen could be subject to the vastly expanded "public charge" rule.

There is one class of benefits left out of the demerit dragnet: ACA marketplace subsidies.  And ironically, a previous immigrant-bashing provision in federal law insulates a few hundred thousand immigrants from the proposed expansion of the public charge rule.