Biden Hands More Benefits to Immigrants; Texas Responds With a Lawsuit

Along with admitting millions of migrants into the U.S., the Biden administration is blowing open the public till for them in “a brazen attempt to ignore congressional mandates and maximize welfare use among noncitizens.”

That critique, by Elizabeth Jacobs of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), shows how truly radical this administration is. Citing U.S. law, Jacobs asserts that financial self-sufficiency has been a basic principle since this country’s earliest immigration statutes. Public charge restrictions have been in U.S. immigration law since at least 1882.

Specifically, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), Section 212(a)(4), makes an alien who is an applicant for a visa, admission, or adjustment of status inadmissible if she or she is likely at any time to become a public charge.

Federal immigration law has long required a public charge determination for immigrants, barring them from remaining in the U.S. if they are likely to use welfare programs like food stamps, Medicaid, government housing aid or other benefits designed for American citizens.

A FAIR analysis last year found that public services provided to illegal aliens – ranging from schools to jails to hospital emergency rooms — cost American taxpayers more than $143 billion annually. That price tag will skyrocket with Biden’s wide-open eligibility rules.

Concluding her detailed diagnosis of Biden’s latest extralegal spasm of migrant pandering, Jacobs points out that “it is immigration policy of the United States that aliens not depend on public resources to meet their needs, but rather rely on their own capabilities and the resources of their families, their sponsors, and private organizations.”

Congress further emphasizes that there is a “compelling government interest” to “remove the incentive for illegal immigration provided by the availability of public benefits.”

Texas would pay heavily for the gutting of longstanding public charge rules. Home to some 3 million illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children, the state is suing the administration.

Charging that the White House “is committed to opening the borders to aliens who lack the ability to take care of themselves,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said, “Texans should not have to pay for these costly immigrants, nor should any other American.” (See lawsuit here.)

Bottom line: A welfare state and open borders are inherently incompatible.