President Trump is preparing to kick off a new plan to ban foreigners living in the U.S. who require government welfare from becoming permanent residents, a move that would save American taxpayers more than $57 billion annually.
According to a February report by Reuters, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) wants to know if foreigners living temporarily in the United States use public benefits — such as food assistance, subsidies for utility bills, or government funded child care. The agency would then consider their costs to Americans before granting them permanent residency.
The Department of Homeland Security has drafted rules seen by Reuters that would allow immigration officers to scrutinize a potential immigrant’s use of certain taxpayer-funded public benefits to determine if they could become a public burden.
For example, U.S. officials could look at whether the applicant has enrolled a child in government pre-school programs or received subsidies for utility bills or health insurance premiums.
The draft rules are a sharp departure from current guidelines, which have been in place since 1999 and specifically bar authorities from considering such non-cash benefits in deciding a person’s eligibility to immigrate to the United States or stay in the country.
“Non-citizens who receive public benefits are not self-sufficient and are relying on the U.S. government and state and local entities for resources instead of their families, sponsors or private organizations,” the document states. “An alien’s receipt of public benefits comes at taxpayer expense and availability of public benefits may provide an incentive for aliens to immigrate to the United States.”
That plan is now moving forward and could be enacted as early as next month.
Americans now spend some $57.4 billion a year to cover the costs of more than 10 million mostly low-skilled foreign nationals who have come to the U.S. in the last decade, a study by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine found. Just as many are expected to flood into the U.S. over the next decade.
According to a Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data in 2016, “immigrant-headed households use 41 percent more federal welfare benefits than their native-born counterparts,” Breitbart reported.
The average household headed by an immigrant (both legal and illegal) in 2012 consumed $6,234 federal in welfare benefits, while the average native-headed households consumed $4,431 in benefits, says the CIS report, which is based on data from the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation.
Foreign nationals and illegal aliens who sneak into the U.S. use nearly 60% more taxpayer-funded assistance than native-born Americans, the CIS study found.
Harvard economist George Borjas says the cost of foreign nationals sucks money away from Americans.
“Since 1965, we have admitted a lot of low-skilled immigrants, and one way to view that policy is that we were running basically the largest anti-poverty program in the world,” he said in 2017.
