Texas Impact has signed on to a comment urging the Biden Administration to act quickly to finalize responsible reforms that protect immigrant families’ access to the health and social services safety net. Organizations including congregations can sign on until April 21.
The Trump “public charge” regulations put immigration applications at risk if lawfully-present immigrants used specific safety net programs for which they qualified. Because the Trump regulations named programs that serve both citizens and non-citizens, they deterred millions in mixed-status families from getting the care and help they needed during the pandemic.
Before President Biden took office, the Protecting Immigrant Families coalition (PIF) urged him to replace the Trump policy with less biased, less dangerous, more responsible public charge regulations. The Biden DHS recently responded, with a regulatory proposal that:
- Assures eligible immigrant families that they can use safety net programs without immigration concerns
- Makes it harder for future presidents to radically change public charge policy, and
- Clearly states that:
- A child’s or other family member’s use of federal safety net programs never affects immigration applications
- Medicaid is safe for eligible immigrant families to use for any other health care need besides long-term institutional care
- SNAP, WIC, the Child Tax Credit, Section 8, and other “non-cash” federal programs (and state- and locally-funded versions of those programs) never affect immigration applications
We want to encourage them to finalize the proposal quickly, so immigrant families can feel safe getting the care and help they need. And to facilitate timely action, we want to minimize the number of comments DHS must review before finalizing the regulations, while providing a forum that brings nonprofits together around a shared message. We also want to take advoantage of the opportunity for public comment to urge DHS to make specific improvements. The PIF sign-on comment:
- Urges DHS to act quickly to finalize public charge reform
- Comments the agency where its proposal would provide critical protections for immigrant families
- Urges DHS to make specific improvements, including:
- Ensuring that state- and locally-funded “cash assistance” programs, like excluded workers funds and universal basic income programs, are not considered in public charge determinations
- Clarifying that Medicaid is never considered in public charge determinations, even when used for long-term institutional care in a nursing home
- Exempting orphans, domestic violence survivors, victims of other crimes, and other vulnerable immigrants from public charge determinations entirely