AMNA NAWAZ: The Trump administration announced today that it plans to implement new immigration
rules.
As Yamiche Alcindor explains, it’s one of the most aggressive steps yet to limit legal
immigration.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
YAMICHE ALCINDOR, PBS WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Today's new rule from the Trump
administration limits who will be eligible for a green card in the United States.
Under current law, immigrants are already required to prove that
they are not what the government deems a, quote, public
charge.
Today, Ken Cuccinelli, the acting head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services,
announced the plans.
He said any immigrants who use-- or who have deemed likely to use a number of public benefits
may not be eligible for legal status.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEN CUCCINELLI, ACTING DIRECTOR, U.S. CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION SERVICES:
The benefit to taxpayers is a long term benefit of seeking to ensure that our immigration
system is bringing people to join us as American citizens as
legal permanent residents first who can stand on their own two
feet, who will not be reliant on the welfare system, especially in the age of the modern
welfare state which is so expansive and expensive frankly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: The new rule includes services afforded to legal immigrants under current
law, such as housing assistance, Medicaid and food
stamps.
To break it all down, I’m joined by Theresa Cardinal Brown.
She is the director of immigration and cross border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center
in Washington.
Thanks so much, Theresa, for being here.
Talk to me about how this will impact immigrants and the legal immigration process in the United
States and who will be most impacted by this new
rule.
THERESA CARDINAL BROWN, BIPARTISAN POLICY CENTER: Sure.
So, the rule applies to those who are applying to get green cards in the
United States.
And, so, one of the long-standing issues in immigration laws as you mentioned is whether
or not someone would become a public charge.
That has been broadly defined as somebody who has been
mostly dependent on the government.
It's a criteria that has been, I'd say, used sparingly, especially over the last couple
of decades but has been a priority of this administration to implement.
So, it would look whether or not people who are applying to
be green cardholders have used public benefits that they might be eligible for.
It would apply to current immigrants or citizens who are looking to
sponsor others to come on green cards, and it would apply to
some non-immigrants who are looking to extend or change their status as well.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: What can you tell us about how much immigrants use public benefits in
comparison to native born Americans.
THERESA CARDINAL BROWN: So, we did a literature review a couple of years about who uses public
benefits, and what we found is, in general, individual immigrants use benefits less often
and at lower rates than U.S. citizens do, but some immigrant-headed
households, particularly those with U.S. citizen children
may use more because the children are eligible for benefits that maybe the immigrant parents
are not.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Critics of the new rule say this is the Trump administration again
unfairly targeting immigrants.
There are talks there are going to be swift legal challenges to this.
How does this new rule really factor into how the Trump
administration has overall used its immigration agenda to target
different groups?
THERESA CARDINAL BROWN: Well, particularly its regulatory agenda has been about legal
immigrants, and one of the things that we have seen is that a lot of the regulatory
changes that have been implemented have been about reducing eligibility
for legal immigration, reducing the number of people
who can qualified for legal immigration or slowing down the legal immigration process.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: You said the term public charge had been kind of implemented and enforced
sparingly.
Tell us a little bit about the history of the term public charge and how certain immigrant
groups have been subject to that term and what it's
meant overall and in the years coming.
THERESA CARDINAL BROWN: Well, the idea of preventing the poor or paupers from immigrating
has been around basically since the beginning
of the republic.
Initially when the United States was created, states had control over who could immigrant
and would look for people who they thought might not be
eligible to -- able to work or support themselves.
In the 1800s, Congress passed the sort of uniform
immigration rules, the Chinese Escalation Act that included this public charge rule.
But, over the years, it has been very subjectively enforced.
So, for example, during the Ellis Island days, they would look whether or not they thought
somebody was physically able of performing work, did they
have family members already here, sponsors, did they bring any money with them.
So it was sort of on the fly.
This has been a priority of this administration to get a public charge rule published since
the administration came in.
An executive order was issued very early in the presidency asking for this to be done.
So, it's new in that we don't know exactly how it's going
to be implemented.
It's still a relatively subjected standard, especially that prospective looking part,
is an immigrant likely to be become a public charge?
That's where it’s a little more iffy because they're looking at things like, does the immigrant
have a work history?
What’s their education level?
Do they have any health issues that might affect whether or not
they would become a public charge?
We have to kind of see how that would be implemented, but we’ve already seen some of these because
consulates overseas have been implementing some of this through the visa review process
over the last year, already.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Now, I want to turn to a major story from last week.
Some 680 immigrants were arrested during immigration raids at
food processing centers in Mississippi.
What goes into such raids and what legal consequences if any might employers
face?
THERESA CARDINAL BROWN: So, a raid like that is -- that size and scope has probably been
in process for many, many months.
It probably was based on some information that Immigration and
Customs Enforcement received that those employers are employing undocumented immigrants, then
they also collaterally arrested undocumented immigrants
they found on the premises.
Now, ICE will go through all that documents that they found during
those search warrants to see if they have enough evidence to
proceed with prosecutions of those employers.
So, we may see some prosecutions, but historically, it's been much more difficult to prosecute
employers for knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants
than it has been to arrest the undocumented immigrants
themselves and see them deported.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Well, lots of immigration news.
Thanks so much for joining us, Theresa Cardinal Brown of the Bipartisan Policy Center.
THERESA CARDINAL BROWN: Thank you.