Q&A of the Day – The real news regarding the “Public Charge” rules
Each day I’ll feature a listener question that’s been submitted by one of these methods.
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Today’s entry: Do you think MSM’s spin on Trump’s immigration policy is intentional or just their natural bias coming out? THANK YOU for speaking truth!
Bottom Line: Intentional and I’ll explain why but first, let’s set the premise of this question. This note comes on back a Miami Herald story from Friday,Low income immigrants are at a greater risk of deportation starting Monday.The story, about the Trump administration’s enforcement of “Public Charge” policy regarding those using/seeking VISA’s could have also have been positioned as “Trump administration to curb VISA and green card abuse”, Feds to enforce VISA and green card policies”, etc. Instead they opted for a message that's misleading at best with implicit bias behind it. Lest there be any doubt here’s how the story begins:
Starting Monday, low-income immigrants who are on public benefits— or will one day need them— will be denied a visa or green card, despite having entered the U.S. legally.
The Trump administration’s new “public charge rule” — which favors wealthier immigrants seeking permanent status and puts the poor at a disadvantage, analysts and scholars say— will keep people who need food stamps, housing vouchers, Supplemental Social Security Income and Medicaid from getting their green cards because they’d be considered a financial burden to the U.S.
The first sentence of the story is based on a false premise. It’s not lawful for people to enter the US on VISA’s or green cards without being self-sustaining, free of federal assistance programs (several states including Florida do allow to state issued assistance programs to be made available). Here’s the next important point left out of this story altogether...what’s happening today is an update of a law that’s been in place since 1882! The Public Charge law states those with temporary status, VISA’s and green card holders, are to be denied to “any person unable to take care of him/herself without becoming a public charge”. In simple to understand language...the law was created to prevent people from coming here on work VISA’s and green cards and setting up shop on government assistance programs instead of using their status to be accretive to our society.
There have been four updates to the law, most recently in 1999, until now. Clearly a lot has changed in 21 years including the income threshold to avoid becoming a burden to American taxpayers. Starting today, the income threshold to not be in violation, is $60,000 for a family of four, up from $32,000 previously. This does not apply to anyone except those in the United States on temporary work status. There were legal challenges to these changes brought against this rule change, however the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration, so this is now in force. As was cited in the Herald story eventually, an estimated 26% of those on temporary status in Florida, or 1.2 million people, are on at least one assistance program. In other words, though the story never said it, those are the people in Florida violating the terms of their VISA/green card status. Those would be the people potentially in the cross-hairs of the public charge enforcement that begins today.
Once again, simply enforcing immigration law and acting in the interests of American tax payers over those who would seek temporary status and abuse our system. And yet that’s being painted in a negative light. Yes, the biased coverage is clearly intentional. Just as has been on any number of related issues like the child detention centers and handling of families detained at the border– even though the policy used by the Trump administration has been used by every President starting with Bill Clinton due to a Supreme Court ruling mandating the terms of the current policy. Remember when some media outlets depicting “children in cages” were actually using pictures from the Obama administration? Funny how that never was a story news media cared about at the time Obama was president... And you’re welcome. I’ll never cave to political correctness and I’ll always illustrate the truth – wherever that takes us.