This is happening at the very same time Biden is overseeing an effective abandonment of border security and enforcement of immigration laws—actions that have set off a record surge of illegal immigrants pouring over the border. At the same time, Democrats are still engendering hope among those elsewhere who are not prepared to go through the process to legally enter the United States by floating promises of amnesty and a path to eventual legal status and citizenship.
The Biden rule change on public charge is more than just another arcane entry in the Federal Register. It’s an open invitation for the United States to become an international welfare state at the expense of American taxpayers.
The rules about prohibiting the entry of those who might become public charges was first implemented as a result of a congressional legislation in 1882, and has since been reaffirmed many times. Even in the era of mass immigration to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a broad consensus in favor of laws wherein those who came to the country had to promise not to become dependent on the state, and/or demonstrate a financial sponsor who would guarantee a would-be immigrant’s sustenance.
Nothing could have been more in character for a country whose entire political culture has long been predicated upon the ideas of individual rights and personal responsibility. New Americans, as well as those whose families had been here for centuries, understood that this was a land of opportunity where everyone had a chance to better themselves by dint of their own industry and ingenuity. The notion that large numbers of newcomers might be allowed to live off the efforts of others was considered both absurd and economically foolish.
All that went out the window in 1999, when public charge rules were changed by the Clinton administration.
At that time, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) limited the circumstances in which a person applying for permanent residence status could be deemed to have become a public charge. INS exempted all those who received what it termed “non-cash benefits,” such as Medicaid, food stamps, housing benefits, child care subsidies and aid to dependent women, infants and children—all of which, while indeed sometimes necessary for those in need, constitute the basic elements of the welfare state. The 1999 INS regulation amounted to a de facto administrative repeal, without the benefit of a congressional vote.
The Trump administration reversed course in 2019, setting off mass pearl-clutching by liberals who declared it a racist attempt to prevent people of color from gaining legal status. Implemented just before the onset of the pandemic in 2020, the rules for those seeking permanent residence status in the United States and forbidding them from becoming “public charges” merely brought the system back to what it had been for more than a century. Liberal courts stymied Trump’s efforts, and after Biden took office his administration rescinded the rule change. The situation thus returned to one wherein a legal immigrant could be utterly dependent on the government but, because no actual cash changed hands, could still claim he/she was not a public charge.
Still, open-borders advocates claim it is imperative that the government reassure both illegal aliens and those hoping for green cards that they need not fear taking government benefits of any kind. The Trump rule put a genuine scare into those seeking green cards, which caused them to eschew various sorts of government programs where they received benefits. That is why Biden is now going through the more complicated and lengthy process of making the change a permanent part of the Federal Register. This will make it easier for immigration advocacy groups to fight a future Republican administration in the courts if, as is likely, such a future Republican administration reinstates Trump’s rule change.
As with the pushback against Trump in 2019, the debate about the question of immigrants becoming public charges is now being depicted in the mainstream media as one about race. Former senior White House advisor Stephen Miller, who pushed for the change, was widely portrayed as a xenophobe and hate-monger because he believed legal immigration should be merit-based, not the result of lotteries or chain migration due to liberal family reunification rules.
But as a Harvard-Harris poll showed in 2018, nearly three-quarters of Americans actually agreed with Miller about merit-based immigration, with Hispanics concurring at nearly the same percentage. Americans also overwhelmingly favor a secure border—something they came closer to achieving under Trump, and which is now a pipe dream as the tidal wave of illegal border crossings continues into Biden’s second year in office.
The Democrats’ offers of amnesty, the reality of lax enforcement—with Border Patrol officers also coming under unfair criticism from Biden for doing their jobs—and the ending of immigration enforcement raids on workplaces has already created a new reality that amounts to an open border. On top of that, Biden is now making permanent a policy wherein those who aspire to legal status or citizenship should not consider it obligatory to stand on their own feet and avoid being supported by those already here. In doing so, Biden is creating an even greater incentive for those who want to come to America to benefit from its extraordinary largesse, rather than work to better themselves. That is a betrayal not only of the government’s responsibility to its citizens and the rule of law, but also of the very American Dream to which generations of immigrants have aspired.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.org, a senior contributor to The Federalist and a columnist for the New York Post. Follow him on Twitter: @jonathans_tobin.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
