Illegal immigrants are opting out of government welfare programs out of fear of Trump Administration crackdowns coming done the pike, reported POLITICO on Monday.
Due to a proposed Trump Administration rule to deny legal status to illegals on welfare, both legal and illegal immigrants have been inundating health care providers with calls demanding they be dropped from federal assistance programs like WIC. “Agencies in at least 18 states say they’ve seen drops of up to 20 percent in enrollment, and they attribute the change largely to fears about the immigration policy,” says the report.
WIC, or the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, is a federally-funded assistance program from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), providing health benefits and services for low income mothers and their children.
Illegal immigrants are asking to be dropped from the welfare program because they are scared of being deported, while some legal immigrants apparently believe their legal status will be in jeopardy because of rumors circulating about potential Trump Administration rules, according to health officials speaking to POLITICO.
There were some 7.4 million women and children enrolled in WIC when President Donald Trump first took office; that number declined to roughly 6.8 million in May. The drop-off in WIC enrollment is also being attributed to a bolstered economy and a decline in immigrant birth rates.
WIC, created in 1974, is a “largely immigration-blind” program, notes POLITICO; “most of the infants it serves are citizens born in the U.S. regardless of their parents’ immigration status.”
President Trump has continued his tough-talk from the 2016 election to the present when it comes to illegal immigration, threatening a government shutdown if a southern border wall is not soon funded.