Should Immigrants On Welfare Be Given Permanent Residency?
Many on the left are very angry that President Trump believes that legal immigrants who are already on welfare rolls may not receive the golden ticket called a Green Card.
It is called the “public charge” rule one in which the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services are given the authority to refuse green cards due to legal immigrants not being able to be self-sufficient.
I am having trouble trying to understand why the left would want to encourage and reward people who are not self-sufficient.
Why wouldn’t we want a merit-based immigration system, many western countries already have one in place. Countries such as:
- Australia
- Austria
- Canada
- Denmark
- Germany
- Hong Kong
- Japan
- New Zealand
- South Korea
- United Kingdom/Britain
This “public charge” rule has survived many court challenges from Democrats in Washington and the country all who believe we should give green cards, which is a major step on the path to the ultimate golden ticket and that is citizenship, to legal immigrants who are not self-sufficient.
In fact this vision of self-sufficient immigrants has been part of the American culture since Colonial times and was very explicitly written into our law in 1882 when our Congress banned any immigrant who was:
unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.
Even President Clinton in 1996 signed legislation giving U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers explicit powers to deny visas to potential public charges.
According to an article in The Washington Times, Ken Cuccinelli:
who pushed through the rule as acting chief of USCIS said that it is not an automatic disqualifier, but it will be “an important factor, heavily weighted to the negative” when USCIS officers decide whether to grant a green card
Mr. Cuccinelli went on to state what I would think would be obvious:
The goal is to make sure that people who are granted long-term status, legal permanent residence status, can stand on their own two feet. And get back to that American tradition that has been in law for over 140 year
Why is that so hard to accept or understand?
Why would we want to give the golden ticket to someone who is not self-sufficient? We already are in debt way above our eyeballs, in fact we are drowning in debt and perhaps these believers who have an issue with this should start feeling concern for the future generations already in our country.
Sandra L. Shullman, president of the American Psychological Association, said going back to the public charge rule will
negatively affect the physical and mental health of those immigrants who are most in need...It would effectively bar many of them from life-sustaining and potentially life-saving programs under the threat of losing a path to citizenship and potential deportation, leading to more immigrant family separations
Why would this negatively affect the physical and mental health of legal immigrants and what about the “physical and mental health” of our children and their future children.
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