On August 7, 2018, it was revealed that the Trump administration is planning to submit new immigration policy that will bar immigrants from obtaining citizenship if they have ever used public welfare programs such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Affordable Care Act or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. This restriction would not only be used to limit who gains a green card in the first place, but may also be used to strip green cards from immigrants who have already obtained them and are living in the United States legally.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, this new rule is “intended to protect the American taxpayer by ensuring that foreign nationals seeking to enter or remain in the U.S are self-sufficient.” The phrase “American taxpayer” is meant to be a dog whistle; the Internal Revenue Service requires that all green card holders and some visa holders pay taxes, so the immigrants who are using public welfare services are also “American taxpayers” by definition. The Department of Homeland Security is intentionally feeding into the xenophobic tendencies of White America by insinuating that Those Foreign People are taking money from their pockets. In reality, this new rule is the United State’s attempt to legally cleanse the population of immigrants who are disabled, poor and hungry.
Why is the DHS targeting this specific population of immigrants? It’s simple: conservative Americans have always felt animosity towards those who make use of public welfare services. Ronald Reagan gained the support of many conservative Americans by detailing the story of the “Welfare Queen” during his 1976 campaign, building upon hate that already existed for Black people, particularly Black women. He painted a mythical picture of a lazy, selfish woman who was practically stealing money out of your pocket so that she didn’t have to work as hard as you. The same rhetoric employed to stir up White Fright in the 70’s is being re-purposed against immigrants today, and is similarly based in mythical fear-mongering.
While the new rule itself is already ghastly and should be opposed because of it’s consequences to immigrants, we should also note the implications about citizenship and nationality in relation to use of public programs. If the United States’ government can strip permanent legal status from immigrants based on their use of public programs, what’s to say that U.S. Citizens won’t also be punished for being disabled, poor and hungry? Just as laws like SESTA/FOSTA test out Internet censorship on sex workers, this new rule makes immigrants “canaries in the coal mine” in the case of public welfare programs. And, just like SESTA/FOSTA, immigrants will die because of the enforcement of this rule, whether they are abused in detention centers, denied healthcare, refused food or sent home to the certain death they tried to avoid in the first place.
It should be universally agreed on that allowing anyone to die from sickness, hunger, or homelessness is a shameful failure of our country to ensure the “unalienable rights” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776. We now know that those rights are only unalienable if you’re a white, able-bodied U.S. citizen, and even then, they could be under scrutiny in the near future. Thanks, Tommy!
