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Trump created a toxic environment for immigrants. Biden must remedy that.' Catherine RampellAmid a public health crisis, parents are turning down free health care for their kids. Amid a hunger crisis, families are refusing food stamps and free baby formula.These families aren't declining public assistance out of pride. They're doing so out of fear.This is the enduring climate of terror and misinformation left behind by the Trump administration - specifically by a regulation designed to scare immigrants and their extended families away from critical safety-net services. (Even if the person getting the benefits would be an impoverished U.S. -born child, legally entitled to help.) President Joe Biden signed an executive order this week directing government agency heads to review the policy; ultimately, though, undoing the rule's damage will require not just rewriting the regulation but basically sending an exuberant love letter to immigrants.Several years ago, the Trump administration began leaking drafts of a rule it was readying that would deny immigrants green cards or other visas if they had been or might someday become a burden on taxpayers- formally known as a public charge. Simply put, this was a solution in search of a problem. Comprehensive studies have found that immigrants actually pay more in federal taxes than they receive in benefits. In fact, noncitizens (those here legally or otherwise) generally aren't even eligible for public benefits, except under extremely limited circumstances.So the Trump officials proposed broadening who or what counted as a taxpayer burden.They said immigrants could be denied green cards or other visas if anyone living in their household - even U.S.-born children - was enrolled in government services, including Head Start (a federal preschool program); Medicaid; food stamps; the supplemental food program for pregnant or nursing women and their babies; and free and reduced-price school lunches.With this sinister move, word spread like wildfire through immigrant communities. Fearful parents began -disenrolling their kids from nutritional programs, health insurance and other government benefits. Some simply stopped going to the doctor.Despite an ongoing national crisis with record levels of illness, financial stress and hunger.More than once, pediatricians have told us they've had children come in so sick and so malnourished that [Child Protective Services] had beencalled on these families, said Cheasty Anderson, director of immigration policy and advocacy at Children's Defense Fund-Texas. Struggling parents believe they're on the horns of this dilemma, she said. They think they must choose between accepting food and medical assistance for their children - or face possible deportation, and thus separation from their children.That's what the Trump administration has conditioned them to believe.Some advocates have expressed frustration that the Biden administration hasn't immediately rescinded the rule. Formal repeal is likely a ways off, assuming the administration goes through the usual (cumbersome, protracted) rulemaking process.But even if the order that Biden signed this week was really more about marketing than action, that pro-immigrant P.R. is valuable. After all, most of the original damage was done by messaging, as the Center for Law and Social Policy's executive director, Olivia Golden, told me. It can, and should, be undone by the same means.If we want immigrant families to stay healthy - and keep their nonimmigrant neighbors healthy, too - the government needs to put better policies on the books. But it needs to rebuild immigrants' trust in those policies, too. That part may ultimately be harder.
Newspaper Details
Sun Journal
New Bern, North Carolina, US
Sat, Feb 06, 2021
Page 11
Full Page
Clipped by
Bobbie J.
USA 12 Sep 2024
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