Biden’s Public Charge: Open Borders and Open Wallets

Adding another magnet to attract all manner of migrants to the United States, the Biden administration is flouting public charge laws to “break down barriers in the immigration system… and eliminate excessive burdens in the application process.”

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ur M. Jaddou’s lofty pronouncements notwithstanding, Team Biden is wreaking more havoc on immigration policy.

By law, a noncitizen deemed likely to become dependent on the government for subsistence can be denied admission to this country. The Trump administration tried, sensibly, to include the full suite of healthcare, housing and social service benefits in the public charge calculation. That attempt stalled when a U.S. district judge ruled that it exceeded executive authority and violated the Administrative Procedure Act.

Seeing an opening, the Biden administration declined to appeal the lower court decision and opted instead to engineer the widest possible access to taxpayer-funded benefits.

Even before Joe Biden entered the White House, two-thirds of all immigrant-headed households in the U.S. relied on at least one form of public welfare. Eager to further “break down barriers” and “eliminate excessive burdens,” USCIS’s Jaddou evidently wants to expand on that.

Such generosity with the public purse flashes more incentives to aliens, says Dale Wilcox, executive director and general counsel at FAIR’s legal arm, the Immigration Reform Law Institute.

“At a time of record deficits and soaring inflation, the last thing our country needs is to essentially provide free healthcare and welfare to anyone in the world who shows up. This in no way benefits American citizens or the country.”

Trump administration rules designed to enforce and update the longstanding public charge law were aborted largely on procedural grounds and, thanks to Biden’s lawyers, never fully tested in the courts.

As FAIR President Dan Stein noted, “The proposals would have corrected expensive and politically driven loopholes, and upheld the clearly expressed intent of Congress that immigrants to the United States be self-reliant.”

But for Biden & Co., it’s business as usual – open borders and open wallets to all comers. And Americans keep paying.