Justices allow enforcement of new green card rule

Justices allow enforcement of new green card rule

https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/d...128e846ccb54f9[FILE - In this June 17, 2019 file photo, The Supreme Court in Washington. A divided Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to put in place a policy connecting the use of public benefits with whether immigrants could become permanent residents. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)


By MARK SHERMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
JAN. 27, 2020 10:47 AM

WASHINGTON — A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to put in place a policy connecting the use of public benefits with whether immigrants could become permanent residents.

The new policy can be used to deny green cards to immigrants over their use of public benefits including Medicaid, food stamps and housing vouchers, as well as other factors.

The justices’ order came by a 5-4 vote and reversed a ruling from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York that had kept in a place a nationwide hold on the policy following lawsuits that have been filed against it.

The court’s four liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, would have prevented the policy from taking effect.

Federal appeals courts in San Francisco and Richmond, Virginia, had previously overturned trial court rulings against the policy. An injunction in Illinois remains in effect, but applies only to that state.

The lawsuits will continue, but immigrants applying for permanent residency must now show they wouldn’t be public charges, or burdens to the country.

The new policy significantly expands what factors would be considered to make that determination, and if it is decided that immigrants could potentially become public charges at any point in the future, that legal residency could be denied.

Roughly 544,000 people apply for green cards annually. According to the government, 382,000 are in categories that would make them subject to the new review.

Immigrants make up a small portion of those getting public benefits, since many are ineligible to get them because of their immigration status.

In a separate opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch urged his colleagues to confront the “real problem” of so-called nationwide injunctions, orders issued by a single judge that apply everywhere.

In this case, even though the administration won rulings in two different appellate courts covering 14 states, its policy could not take effect.

“What in this gamesmanship and chaos can we be proud of?” Gorsuch wrote in an opinion joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com...reen-card-rule

Jan 27, 2020
Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court gave the go-ahead on Monday for one of President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies, allowing his administration to implement a rule denying legal permanent residency to certain immigrants deemed likely to require government assistance in the future.

The justices, on a 5-4 vote, granted the administration’s request to lift a lower court’s injunction that had blocked the so-called public charge policy while litigation over its legality continues. The rule has been criticized by immigrant rights advocates as a “wealth test” that would disproportionately keep out non-white immigrants.

The court’s five conservative justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts and two justices appointed by Trump, carried the day. The court’s four liberal justices said they would have denied the administration’s request. The action was announced even as Roberts sat as the presiding officer in Trump’s impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate.

Lawsuits aiming to block the policy were filed against the administration by the states of New York, Connecticut and Vermont as well as by New York City and several nonprofit organizations.

In imposing an injunction blocking its implementation, U.S. District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan on Oct. 11 called the rule “repugnant to the American Dream” and a “policy of exclusion in search of a justification.”

The administration had asked the high court to let the rule go into effect even before the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules on Trump’s appeal of the judge’s injunction. The 2nd Circuit is considering the matter on an expedited basis, with legal papers to be submitted by Feb. 14 and arguments to be held soon afterward.

The Supreme Court’s action means the administration can implement the rule across the country except in Illinois, where a lower court decision blocking it in that state remains in place.

Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy secretary at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, praised the high court’s action.

“It is very clear the U.S. Supreme Court is fed up with these national injunctions by judges who are trying to impose their policy preferences instead of enforcing the law,” Cuccinelli told reporters.

GREEN CARDS

At issue is which immigrants will be granted legal permanent residency, known as a “green card.” Under Trump’s policy, immigration officers would consider factors such as age, educational level and English proficiency to decide whether an immigrant would be likely to become a “public charge” who would receive government benefits such as the Medicaid health insurance program for the poor.

The administration has said the new rule is necessary to better ensure that immigrants will be self-sufficient. Critics have said the rule would disproportionately bar low-income people from developing countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia from permanent residency.

Trump has made his tough immigration stance a hallmark of his presidency and his 2020 re-election campaign.

U.S. immigration law has long required officials to exclude a person likely to become a “public charge” from permanent residency. But U.S. guidelines in place for the past two decades had said that immigrants likely to become primarily dependent only on direct cash assistance or long-term institutionalization, in a nursing home for example, at the government’s expense would be barred under “public charge” grounds.

The new rule expands the “public charge” bar to anyone deemed likely to receive a much wider range of public benefits for more than an aggregate of 12 months over any 36-month period including healthcare, housing and food assistance.

The vast majority of people applying for permanent residency are not eligible for public benefits themselves, but a 2019 Urban Institute survey found that the rule is already deterring people from seeking benefits for U.S. citizen children, for fear of harming their own future immigration status. Benefits for family members are not considered under the rule.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee who voted on Monday to lift the injunction, issued an opinion criticizing lower courts’ “increasingly common” use of nationwide injunctions to halt government policies from applying not only to the people who are challenging them in a case but to everyone.

Gorsuch urged the Supreme Court to confront the issue, which he said raises questions about the scope of judges’ power and unfairness in the system. “What in this gamesmanship and chaos can we be proud of?” Gorsuch asked.

Two other federal appeals courts previously lifted nationwide injunctions ordered by lower courts blocking the rule.

The high court could give Trump more victories on immigration policy. The conservative justices signaled support in November for Trump’s bid to kill a program that protects hundreds of thousands of immigrants - dubbed “Dreamers” - who entered the United States illegally as children. A ruling is due by the end of June.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN1ZQ24N

GOOD!!!!

NO welfare, no food stamps, no taxpayer funded healthcare, no HUD housing, no disability, no social security! No overbreeding in poverty and NO chain migration.

NO ESL CLASSES paid by U.S. taxpayers!!!


No citizenship!!!

Saved by the Supreme Court: Conservative justices boost Stephen Miller's anti-immigration agenda

Once again, conservative justices side with Trump on immigration, approving discriminatory new "public charge" rule

SOPHIA TESFAYE
JANUARY 28, 2020 11:00AM

Not even an impeachment trial can slow down the White House's anti-immigrant agenda.

Even as Chief Justice John Roberts presided over the Senate's trial of President Trump on Monday, the Supreme Court gifted senior White House adviser and documented white nationalist Stephen Miller by lifting a lower court's nationwide injunction against discriminatory new rules that represent the strongest effort to restrict legal immigration into the U.S. in more than a century.

On Holocaust Memorial Day, all five Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices approved an expansion of the "public charge" policy that was once used to close the door on Jewish refugees from Europe. A "public charge" has historically referred to someone who is "primarily dependent on the government for subsistence" based on their receipt of "public cash assistance." In an effort to encourage self-deportation by making people's lives miserable, the Trump administration announced last August plans to expand the definition of a public charge — an immigrant who received one or more designated public services — thereby providing an avenue by which to deny permanent resident status. It punishes immigrants for using public services to which they are legally entitled.

Under the new rules, even legal immigrants who haven't yet received any public assistance but are determined to be "more likely than not" to do so at some point in their lifetimes could be denied entry into the U.S. or denied permission to remain as permanent residents. This gives enormous discretion to officials in determining who is a "public charge." One Trump administration guidance includes any immigrant whose current family income is below 125 percent of the federal poverty level. Of course, such a criterion would result in racial disparate impacts, as many immigrants of color come from nations with low wage levels. For example, few adults living in Africa earn above 125 percent of the U.S. poverty line. After immigrating to the U.S., however, employed immigrant men from Africa earned an average of $63,101 in 2012 — or about 250 percent of the poverty line.

Roughly 544,000 immigrants apply for green cards annually. According to an analysis from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation about 94 percent would be subject to the new review, while 42 percent of legal immigrants could see their green card applications "weighed negatively." The new rules would even deem about half of all U.S.-born citizens likely to be a public charge, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Green card denials based on the public charge policy have dramatically jumped since Trump took office, with the State Department disqualifying more than 12,000 visa applicants in 2019 based on the rule, versus just 1,033 people in 2016 under the Obama administration.

In blocking the rule back in October, U.S. District Judge George Daniels, one of five federal judges to rule against the Trump administration, called the expanded rule "repugnant to the American Dream of the opportunity for prosperity and success through hard work and upward mobility" and a "policy of exclusion in search of a justification." The New York district court judge issued a nationwide injunction on its implementation and while the Second Circuit Court of Appeals allowed his injunction to remain in effect, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a similar injunction. The Supreme Court sided with the Ninth Circuit on Monday.

Nothing in the Supreme Court's decision addresses the merits or the morality of Trump's immigration policy. This decision was entirely a matter of legal jurisdiction, as the conservative justices saw it. They derided the idea of district courts imposing nationwide injunctions on Trump administration policy. Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, issued a five-page concurring opinion with Monday's order arguing that such nationwide injunctions exceed the authority of federal judges.

"The real problem here is the increasingly common practice of trial courts ordering relief that transcends the cases before them. Whether framed as injunctions of 'nationwide,' 'universal,' or 'cosmic' scope, these orders share the same basic flaw — they direct how the defendant must act toward persons who are not parties to the case," Gorsuch wrote.

"What in this gamesmanship and chaos can we be proud of?" Gorsuch asked.

But as Judge Daniels noted in October, true chaos is caused not by the technicalities of judicial review but by an administration that is attempting to radically disrupt determinations that have guided immigration policy for more than a century. Trump officials did not "articulate why they are changing the public charge definition, why this new definition is needed now, or why the definition set forth in the Rule — which has absolutely no support in the history of U.S. immigration law — is reasonable," Daniels ruled. By allowing the rollout of the new rule to move forward anyway, the Supreme Court is helping sow chaos and confusion, to chilling effect. Families that include immigrants already have forgone critical services out of an abundance of caution and will almost certainly continue to do so, at great cost.

The Supreme Court, with the addition of two new Trump-picked justices, has repeatedly served as a tool to cow the lower courts into submission on immigration. As with the public charge case, the Roberts court has allowed Trump's Department of Justice to skip the appeals court to request direct relief from the Supreme Court. So much for conservative complaints about judicial activism.

https://www.salon.com/2020/01/28/sav...ration-agenda/