Trump draft executive order full of sound and fury on immigration, welfare and deportation
I have been reluctant to blog about another possible immigration executive order that has been making the rounds. It would fit into a long history of disfavor of immigrant benefit recipients (and the poor generally) in the United States. And it would test the nation’s commitment of the “huddled masses” the world over.
Janell Ross in the Washington Post considers a President Trump draft executive order replete with “sound and fury on immigration, welfare and deportation.” The draft plan would bar the admission of would-be immigrants who might ever need public assistance (which current law does with efficient precision) and to deport, whenever possible, those already dependent on any public benefits (and apparently any public benefits received on behalf of U.S. citizen children).
The draft executive order illuminates one of the ways in which the Trump administration plans to deliver on campaign promises to halt the abuse of social service programs. The language in the order portrays immigrants generally as a drain on the American taxpayer, and would direct the government to address the issue. The draft order would:
- Direct various federal agencies to more strictly identify and exclude potential immigrants likely to need certain types of public aid and deport those already in the United States who have had to rely on social services help.
- Command federal officials to determine how much the federal government could save — it specifically suggests a savings of $100 billion — if immigrants were limited to getting “only the public benefits that they are eligible to receive.”
- Compel federal officials to demand reimbursement from people inside the United States who made legal promises to support immigrant relatives, if necessary.
- Require social service agencies to report immigrant benefit recipients to federal authorities.
The order calls for research, including into how the estimated $100 billion in savings the order says these activities would generate could be brought to bear on domestic poverty along with regular reports monitoring the number of immigrants blocked, reimbursements demanded and the status of monitoring efforts to stop immigrants from receiving public benefits.
Research (including by the Cato Institute) has shown that immigrants are eligible for few public benefits and tend to underuse public benefits compared to U.S. citizens. Government agencies have engaged in outreach in recent years to encourage immigrants to seek public benefits for which they or their families are eligible.
KJ