When the Trump administration announced that it is going to start enforcing a Clinton-era law that denies legal immigration status and work cards for non-naturalized immigrants who have come to rely on government welfare programs, Nevada Democrats recoiled in horror.
How dare the administration insist that immigrants earn their own way and not be a burden on the taxpayers.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services acting Director Ken Cuccinelli said at a White House press briefing that President Trump was delivering on his promise to enforce longstanding immigration law.
“Today, USCIS, the agency I head as part of the Department of Homeland Security, has issued a rule that encourages and ensures self-reliance and self-sufficiency for those seeking to come to, or to stay in, the United States,” Cuccinelli said. “It will also help promote immigrant success in the United States as they seek opportunity here. … The virtues of perseverance, hard work, and self-sufficiency laid the foundation of our nation and have defined generations of immigrants seeking opportunity in the United States.”
As of Oct. 15 legal immigrants would no longer be able to stay and work in this country if during a 12-month period over the past three years they had received a certain level of cash benefits, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, most forms of Medicaid and some housing programs such as Section 8.
In a Twitter posting Las Vegas Democratic Rep. Dina Titus charged, “The Trump Administration just put forward another cruel plan to cut legal immigration and put food, health care, and housing further out of reach for immigrant families. That’s why I co-sponsored a bill to block this disgraceful proposal from going into effect.”
Democratic Rep. Steve Horsford, who represents northern Clark County and much of Southern Nevada, put out a press release blasting the new criteria. “This is just the latest attack from the Trump administration on immigrant communities — taking health care and food away from children and families …” the congressman said. “This fight isn’t over. We must continue to stand up, speak out, and fight back to protect immigrant families. This regulation forces millions of families to choose between the things the food, shelter and health care they need and the people they love.”
Back in October, when the administration first broached the changes in legal immigration eligibility, Nevada senior Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto joined with several other senators in a letter declaring, “Frightening people away from critical resources would compromise families and communities across our country. The wellbeing of children and parents are inextricably linked. It is impossible to single out one member of a family without having a ripple effect on children and other members of the household. One in four children in America have at least one foreign-born parent, and children of immigrants make up 31 percent of all children in families that receive relevant benefits. Furthermore, over nine million of these children are U.S. citizens.”
According to various studies as many as 50 to 60 percent of households headed by non-citizen immigrants rely on some form of welfare compared to 30 to 40 percent of homes headed by native-born citizens.
This past week Nevada Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford decided to spend Nevada tax money to fight the new rules, joining with a dozen other attorneys general in filing suit against the federal government.
“I pledged to protect Nevada’s families, and I will continue to protect our families from the Trump Administration’s numerous attacks,” Ford said in a press release announcing his action. “This proposed change is not only mean-spirited, it essentially makes legal immigrants choose between maintaining their legal status and receiving assistance to meet basic needs, like food, health care and housing. It’s unconscionable.”
U.S. taxpayers should not be expected to feed, house and provide health care for everyone on the planet who manages to make it to our doorstep. — TM
Ben Carson’s mother worked two jobs when he was a youth in Detroit. However, the family needed food stamps to survive. We have a problem with the working poor in this country. One can work forty hours at Walmart and still need puplic assistance. It does not matter if you were born here or immigrated here. To single out immigrants is appalling. However, I assume the new rules will not apply to immigrants from Norway.
As an American citizen when you cross the border, enter another country you are expected to be self-supporting. The same should be expected of those that enter our country.
Mr. Mitchell, you were right in bringing President Clinton into the conversation about immigration, our social safety net, and who deserves to receive benefits. The problem is that you took your magnifying glass and tweezers to pick out one small pea in the pod. Your readers deserve the larger story. Yes, Clinton did impose limits on who and how long immigrants could receive benefits, but he also imposed strict limits on citizens as well. Clinton’s policies put more people on the welfare rolls than any previous president and he also got more people off welfare than any predecessor. What you also neglect to point out is that he didn’t hover over their shoulders with a check-list and a stopwatch counting the seconds before they would be expelled from public assistance or deported. He took up the challenge to help make the efforts of being a self-sustaining family a fair fight. He focused his efforts on improving the economy, being sure there were jobs that paid enough to feed and house a family, and gave welfare recipients a leg up and a shot at being successful in becoming independent. Along the way his economic policies balanced the budget and allowed lower- and middle-class families to improve their lot, whether they were immigrants or born citizens. The difference in the Trump policy is that it is designed for failure. They make it clear that if you are not already wealthy, educated, and white, you need not apply. Economic efforts of this administration are spent on improving the lot of the already wealthy. Three jobs paying meager wages, policies that make getting public assistance a challenge, and portraying recipients as freeloaders and a drain on society makes a false impression. Finally, please make sure your comments make clear the difference between immigration and asylum seekers. They are not the same.
Some of these comments like T. Donnelly are just more unadulterated BS. You give Clinton tons tons of credit because the dot com bubble just happened to build during his administration, which had nothing to do with him, and then you blame Trump for financially helping only the rich. Tell that to millions who are now working at well paying jobs, that Trump created thru getting rid of ridiculous restraints on businesses, large and small, not to mention giving the stock market record breaking gains and providing the best consumer confidence in decades with policies that promote, not hurt, capitalism. The entire time B. Hussein O. was president, the job market was stagnate, and even a normal improvement was squashed with his anti-business policies, war on gas and coal and Solar energy bail outs that wasted billions of tax dollars. I’m not jeopardizing my SS that I payed into for 40 years, for illegal immigrants that intentionally break the law, and want to sponge of our government. Every immigrant has to come in legally, period. That’s the law!! And, Trump has the balls to ignore liberal garbage, and get the job done.
DOJ is claiming that 64% of Federal arrests in 2018 were of non-citizens – non citizens comprise 7% of USA population.
Non citizens comprise 15% of our population. 90% of the arrests of non citizens were for immigration laws. Non citizens are less less likely to be arrested for violent crimes. Do your homework. Fake news!