A US Supreme Court ruling issued last Monday will make it more difficult for Filipinos to seek residency, or green card, or admission to the United States.
A divided Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to begin implementing rules that make it easier for the government to deny limited-income immigrants residency or admission to the US because they use public assistance programs or might use them in the future.
The court granted the administration’s emergency request to start enforcing the rules for now, a move that nullifies an order by a federal appeals court that blocked the immigration restrictions while litigation was ongoing.
The court’s action came on “five to 4” vote, splitting the justices along ideological lines, with conservatives in the majority. As is its custom when it issues emergency orders, the court didn’t explain its reasoning.
Announced in August by the Department of Homeland Security, the rules effectively expand the pool of people considered likely to become “public charge” under US immigration law. If an immigrant makes use of a public assistance program, such as housing assistance, food stamps or Medicard—or an immigration officer estimates he or she might in the future—the person could be denied a green card, or barred from the US altogether.
The rules have the potential to reshape the type of immigrants who are allowed into the US and significantly curb the number of people granted permanent residence each year.
The White House called the court’s order a “massive win for American taxpayers, American workers and the American Constitution.”
Foreigners seeking immigration status in the US generally have to show they have enough financial resources to keep them from relying on government programs that assist poor American. The denial of immigration visas on public charge grounds has increased during the Trump administration, even before the new rules.
Immigrants aren’t eligible for the vast majority of public assistance programs in the US, and most would feel the rules impact through a test immigration officers must follow to determine whether they might in the future become dependent on a public benefit.
The test will vet applicants on a series of factors, such as their English-speaking ability, their educational attainment, their health, and whether their income is less than 125 percent of the federal poverty level. Scoring poorly on any of these factors could make it less likely for an immigrant, applying from within the US or abroad, to qualify for permanent residency.
The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan Washington think tank, estimates that a majority of future applicants from Latin America and Africa could be denied under the new test.
Immigrant advocates fear that the new policy could drive many more immigrants, especially unauthorized immigrants with US citizen children, to forego public benefits altogether.
Several judges issued preliminary rulings in October that blocked the Trump administration policy. Some, but not all, of those rulings had been put on hold by higher courts.
Barbara D. Underwood, the New York solicitor general, responded that the new policy “would radically disrupt over a century of settled immigration policy and public benefits programs.”
“The rule’s vast expansion of public charge—to include employed individuals who receive any amount of certain means-tested benefits for even brief periods of time—is a stark departure from a more than century-long consensus that has limited the term to individuals who are primarily dependent on the government for long-term subsistence,” she wrote.
“Public charge has never included,” Underwood wrote, “employed persons who receive modest or temporary amounts of government benefits designed to promote health, or upward mobility.”
Lawyers for the private groups challenging the new policy, relying on estimates published by the Department of Homeland Security, wrote that “the rule will cause hundreds of thousands of individuals and households, in many cases noncitizens not even subject to public charge scrutiny, to forego public benefits for which they are eligible, out of fear and confusion about the consequences for their immigration status of accepting such benefits.”
That could lead, they wrote, summarizing the department’s findings, to “increased malnutrition [especially for pregnant or breastfeeding women, infants, or children] and increased prevalence of communicable diseases, increased poverty and housing instability. Source: The Wall Street Journal, 1/28/2020, A3; The New York Times Journal, (1/28/2020, A13).
This new Trump policy should urge our own Philippine government to discourage permanent residency, and green card holders seeking permanent residency in the US.
But, are there enough job opportunities and other incentives to keep them here?