Senate Republicans Seek to End Biden’s Welfare-Dependent Immigration

Senate Republicans Seek to End Biden’s Welfare-Dependent Immigration

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by JOHN BINDER 10 Mar 2023

Senate Republicans are seeking to end President Joe Biden’s welfare-dependent legal immigration inflow to the United States after former President Trump had written new regulations to make it more difficult for welfare-dependent foreign nationals to secure green cards.

In early 2020, the Trump administration finalized a federal regulation known as the “public charge” rule that made it less likely for foreign nationals to secure green cards if they had previously used welfare programs like food stamps, Medicaid, or taxpayer-funded housing.

Nearly immediately after taking office, Biden threw out the finalized public charge rule imposed by Trump, blowing open the door for welfare-dependent immigration to the United States, for which American taxpayers will ultimately foot the bill.

Led by Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), the group of Senate Republicans has reintroduced a resolution to return the public charge rule to its prior version.

“… it is fair and sensible to favor prospective new citizens who will not be reliant on government benefits,” Marshall said in a statement.

“We have millions of our own American citizens without health insurance and receiving SNAP benefits, as well as hundreds of thousands sleeping on the streets at night,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX), who has filed the identical version in the House, said. “Instead of making it a priority to find our own citizens homes, meals, and health insurance, Joe Biden continues to exacerbate the issue.“[Emphasis added]

Sens. Ted Budd (R-NC), Mike Braun (R-IN), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Mike Lee (R-UT), James Risch (R-ID), and Rick Scott (R-FL) are cosponsoring the resolution.

Reps. Mike Johnson (R-LA), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Andy Ogles (R-TN) are cosponsoring Nehls’ House version of the resolution.

When Trump first issued the public charge rule in 2019, polls found that the policy was overwhelmingly popular with Americans. About 6 in 10 Americans said they supported ending welfare-dependent legal immigration, including 56 percent of Hispanics and 71 percent of black Americans.

In 2017, the National Academies of Science noted that state and local taxpayers are billed about $1,600 each year per immigrant to pay for their welfare and revealed that foreign-born households consume 33 percent more cash welfare than native-born American households.

A similar study from Center for Immigration Studies found that about 63 percent of non-U.S. citizen immigrant households use at least one form of public welfare, while only about 35 percent of native-born American households are on welfare. This means that nearly twice as many non-U.S. citizen households use welfare as native-born households.

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Chart via the Center for Immigration Studies

Every year, the federal government rewards about 1.2 million foreign nationals with green cards to permanently resettle in the United States while another 1.4 million foreign nationals secure various temporary work visas to take American jobs.

This massive legal immigration inflow, opposed by the majority of Republican voters, is in addition to the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who are annually added to the United States population. The latest estimate puts the nation’s illegal alien population at 15.5 million, costing taxpayers more than $150 billion every year.

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