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The White House: “Taxpayer-Funded Benefits Are for American Citizens — Not Illegals”

By immigrationprof

45_donald_trump

The hits just keep on coming!  Here is the latest from the White House:

“Today, at the direction of President Donald J. Trump, the Administration is taking the biggest step in more than 30 years to protect taxpayer-funded benefits for American citizens — NOT illegal aliens. The move, which preserves roughly $40 billion in benefits for American citizens, overturns decades of bureaucratic defiance and builds on President Trump’s executive order directing an END to the subsidization of open borders.

Under President Trump, hardworking Americans will no longer be forced to front the cost of benefits for illegals:

  • The Department of Health and Human Services is restricting illegal aliens from 13 additional public programs, including Head Start, health workforce scholarships and loans, mental health and substance abuse support, family planning, and more.
  • The Department of Education is ending free tuition for illegal aliens at post-secondary career and technical education programs.
  • The Department of Agriculture is restricting illegal aliens from federally funded food assistance programs.
  • The Department of Labor is barring illegal aliens from accessing federal workforce development resources and grants.
  • The Department of Justice is closing longstanding loopholes that have allowed illegal aliens to access taxpayer-funded benefits.”

It is hard to know what this all means. 

Some Republicans have long blamed immigrants for exhausting public benefits.  Proposition 187 in 1994 was passed because of this concern. The Mexican repatriation during the Great Depression was fueled by a concern with immigrant public benefit receipt as well as immigrants taking American jobs. 

There are many programs mentioned here.  Has Congress authorized undocumented immigrants to participate in Head Start?  How about US citizen children of undocumented immigrants?   Can the President bar the receipt of nutritional benefits for U.S. citizen children?   We will have to see how the programs are rolled out and the legal challenges that follow. 
 
The nonresident fees for undocumented students run head on to the law of the states.  The Trump administration has challenged several state laws allowing undocumented residents to pay in-state  fees at public universities.  California’s may be next.  This raises federalism issues, of course. 
 
Stay tuned!
 
KJ

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