Welcome to today's live immigration attorney chat. My name is Attorney Vanessa Ruiz of
Immigration for Couples. For those of you who are new to our firm or to our Facebook page,
our firm is dedicated to helping exclusively couples specifically navigate the U.S immigration
process. We assist clients across the nation, across the world. We honestly have clients from
all over. It's one of our favorite things and we regularly host these Facebook lives just
like this one to provide you with important information and updates in the world of the
immigration for couples. Today, I'm going to be discussing what's new with the public charge rule.
For those of you who are joining us live today, please feel free to type any questions you may
have in the comments section. I'll be happy to answer those after I kind of discuss the topic
a little bit if we have some time. For those of you who are watching on replay,
that's okay. Also leave us some comments. We love reading your comments and also it helps give us
ideas for topics for next time and so that way if you get a chance to follow us weekly we're
probably going to talk about something that is important to you or that you've been wondering
kind of those burning questions so definitely leave us comments whether you're lying or whether
you're watching later so getting into this week's topic. What's new with the public charge rule?
The public charge is something that has been in effect for decades with immigration but
it has been gaining notoriety the past couple of years under the past presidential administration
essentially it came to light because they implemented a new rule. In 1999, they proposed
a rule and that's the guidelines that we've been following for the past 20 years or more. Until
2019 and 2020, there was nothing about the public charge rule it was in effect immigration would
always consider certain factors but what really brought the attention to it in 2019-2020 was that
they implemented a new rule and it became very burdensome. People had to essentially fill out
new forms that they never had to before. They had to show a lot of proof that they wouldn't become
a burden on the government. What the government doesn't want is for a person who is applying for
an immigration benefit to become a public charge on the government, essentially receiving certain
types of cash benefits and being unable to support them. What happened a few years ago was that they
implemented a very heavy rule that required a lot of information, a lot of documentation. It was
honestly just very burdensome on every applicant and honestly, even looking at it myself sometimes
thinking, nobody really is going to qualify for this because they made it very heavy. Thankfully,
once the new administration came in, they put a pause on that and they said,
we're going to go ahead and reevaluate. That's what happened. Today, they announced their final
rule today and what's going to happen is it's going to go in effect in 105 days essentially
their effective date is going to be December 23rd of 2022 so in a few months around Christmas time.
They're saying this is our new proposed rule and now it's going to be finalized. Hopefully,
this is kind of the end of us going through the ups and downs of that public charge rule.
They've essentially taken the 1999 rule and added a couple of things,
tweaked a few things but they knew that the rule from a few years ago from 2019 essentially what
they called it the 2019 rule was too heavy and too burdensome on applicants so they decided,
we're going to take a couple of things from that but we're really going to base it off of this 1999
rule that's been working for us just fine up until this point. That they're saying is that the main
types of benefits that are going to be applicable when they're considering the public charge are
going to be essentially cash assistance. One of the things that they are considering is
cash assistance under temporary assistance for needy families called the TANF program, state
and local cash assistance programs that provide benefits for income maintenance. Usually, they're
called general assistance programs. They're also going to consider institutionalization. Those
people who might have to be institutionalized for long-term care at the government expense. They're
not talking private expenses, they're talking government expenses such as government-funded
nursing homes or government-funded mental health institutions, things like that. Essentially what
they're saying is we're not considering some of those main benefits that people are actually
eligible for. A lot of people don't actually qualify for a lot of these public benefits when
they come in as permanent residents, things like that. Also, one of the key things to remember is
that these rules are for people who are adjusting their status. These people who are applying for
their actual green card. People who already have green cards, people who are citizens,
they don't apply to them. It's mostly for people who are at the stage of applying currently. They
are not going to consider Medicaid or other health insurance or health services. They specifically
mentioned they are not going to hold anything against those who might have requested any kind of
public benefit during COVID times. People who are getting vaccines, people who are seeking medical
treatment. They're still encouraging people get that emergency medical treatment, get what
you need to do, keep yourself safe, keep yourself healthy because we're not going to be considering
that negatively. They specifically also mentioned CHIP, Children's Health Insurance Programs,
SNAP which is nutrition programs including food stamps, housing benefits, child care services,
emergency assistance, emergency disaster reliefs, foster care and adoption assistance,
educational assistance, job training programs, community-based programs, or assistance such as
soup kitchens, crisis counseling, intervention, short-term shelters, domestic violence shelters,
things like that. They're not going to be considering all that which is good because
those are usually the things that people need on an emergency-type basis. The good thing is that
they have specifically said we are not considering those and another big thing that they're saying is
that it doesn't matter if family members within the household have received those benefits. It's
really for the applicant themselves. A lot of the questions that were coming up were, "If my U.S
citizen children are receiving these benefits, is it going to affect me?" Thankfully, they are
going to make sure to codify that saying, no, it does not count against you if your citizen spouse
or your citizen children, your citizen parents, anything like that have received these benefits,
it's not going to count against the applicant themselves so that's really good as well.
Essentially what they're doing is they're taking little pieces from both but they're mostly using
the old rule meaning that they're gonna make it not as burdensome. They have also said that there
will not be any additional forms. They are going to incorporate it into the forms and applications
that we already have instead of having separate ones. For a while there, we had to submit extra
forms, extra evidence, things like that. The good thing is that they're trying to make it where
it's not as heavy of a burden on these applicants. This is specifically for USCIS, meaning for those
people who are applying within the US and the Department of State and those consular processing
cases usually follow suit but they are under a different guidance called the FAM. They usually
will follow whatever USCIS is saying. Sometimes, it just takes them a little bit longer to actually
codify it as well. We're looking forward to them doing that also since we know we have a lot of
clients who are doing their interviews outside of the US so we're hoping that soon they'll follow
suit and have something in writing as well. We are thankful for them codifying this new rule and
making it clearer to people and that way people aren't left wondering, people aren't left worried
and as usual if somebody doesn't qualify as a financial sponsor, they can get joint sponsors,
things like that. What immigration has also said is that as a last case scenario, if for
some reason they believe that somebody is going to be a burden on the government, they don't have a
sponsor who earns enough to be their sponsor, for some reason maybe they don't have a joint sponsor
the catch-all is that they can actually request a bond. They may submit a letter to somebody at the
end of their case saying, we cannot approve you, we do think that you're going to be a
public charge, you're going to be a burden on the government but if you pay a certain bond amount,
then it's kind of like a show of good faith that that you were able to get this and at the end, you
can apply and we can approve you. It's essentially a fee in a way, a fine that this person may have
to pay but later on they can try and recoup that after a certain amount of time things like that.
That's kind of like last resort, we don't see that very often. Most of the time people are
fine as long as they're showing that they have a joint financial sponsor who can also help them in
case that the person who is petitioning for them isn't able to earn enough and they're not able to
show enough of their own resources. We always have that positive thing. I want to say hello,
shout out to AJ watching from Liberia. Thank you so much for watching. Like I said we're gonna do
these Facebook lives every week and so we're gonna have little topics like this. If you have any
questions at all, any kind of comment, like I said leave it in the comments and we'll go ahead and
we'll try and answer them live if we have time or we can definitely try and make a new video. I know
Attorney Desire did one yesterday and we had a really good question come up from one of the
watchers who asked about the medical exam so that's something that we're definitely going
to talk about soon and so if you have any ideas any kind of questions or something that you want
answered something that you may have already have answered but you think would benefit somebody else
definitely leave that in the comments. we have another viewer Muhammad hello from Yemen. Hi,
Muhammad. Thank you so much for watching and I thank you for sharing this information.
For everyone who is watching live for everyone who's watching later,
we encourage you to please check out our free Resource Center immigrationforcouples.com. That's
our website. We have a lot of Facebook signs, we have YouTube videos, we have downloadable
charts and resources for people who are kind of starting the process and we'd love to be able to
help you all through that process as well so if you are in a relationship thinking about maybe
proposing maybe popping that question trying to settle down anything like that we would love to
be able to talk to you all about that and kind of help guide you through this so you know we give
general advice here but nothing is going to beat a consultation with an attorney where we really
can dive into your individual situation I always tell people that no two cases are alike even when
they think they are they honestly are not so we encourage you to check out those resources
like I said immigrationforcouples.com. Follow our Facebook page and also if you can like and share
these videos it's going to help reach other couples gonna help reach other people and
that way we can definitely just widen our scope and help as many people as possible.
That's what my goal is. It's why I became an attorney I know that attorneys may get
an attorney Desiree also feel the same I mean helping people is just what we do best and it's
what we enjoy the most so definitely like and share these videos so we can reach more people
and we will see you next week I hope you guys have a great weekend and we'll talk to you soon