Public Charge Rule Bans Almost Entirely Self-Sufficient Legal Immigrants

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) finalizeda regulation today that would ban legal status to immigrants who its officers determine are likely to become “public charges”—that is, wards of the state. DHS claims that the rule will promote self-sufficiency among immigrants, but the goal is a farce. The rule is designed to exclude immigrants regardless of the degree to which they are supporting themselves and contributing positively to the economy . DHS actually made the final rule worse than the proposed rule.DHS responded tomy comments on theproposed rule inits final rule without naming me specifically. My primary complaint was that DHS ’sproposed definition of a public charge was anyone who received more than 15 percent of the poverty line in benefits, which entirely ignored the degree to which they supported themselves. On pages 245 and 246, DHS cites and responds to my comment (and others) on this point. DHS writes:Other commenters stated that a noncitizen family of four making 250 percent of the federal poverty line could be deemed public charges if they received $2.50 per person per day, although such a family would be about 95 percent self-sufficient. A commenter stated that therefore, DHS ’s standard to measure self-sufficiency had no rational connection with actual self-sufficiency.Yet DHS responded to my comment by significantly worsening this issue. DHS writes that because “a lack of self-sufficiency is a single duration-based threshold,” it will ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs