Welfare for immigrants is alien to our laws, history, and traditions

Article author: 
Daniel Horowitz
Article publisher: 
Conservative Review
Article date: 
11 August 2018
Article category: 
Our American Future
Tags: 
immigration
cost
Article link: 
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Article Body: 

Immigration is an elective policy of a sovereign nation. It should benefit America and never create a public charge. That notion is one of the most foundational principles of our country. It dates back to colonial times and has been enforced by the states since the founding and then by the federal government when it fully reclaimed immigration in the 1880s. That immigrants shouldn’t be a public charge is still the law on the books, yet it’s rarely enforced. Now that the Trump administration is seeking to enforce the law, suddenly the Left is screaming about denying immigrants their rightful citizenship....

The notion of immigrants coming here and obtaining public assistance would have been foreign to our Founders, even if they could have envisioned a welfare state for those already here. In 1813, Madison said emphatically to Morris Birkbeck, “… it is not either the provision of our laws or the practice of the Government to give any encouragement to emigrants, unless it be in cases where they may bring with them some special addition to our stock of arts or articles of culture.”...

As I note in Chapter 6 of my book, this is why, already in the 1600s, the northern colonies, and later on the southern colonies, adopted public charge laws denying entry to “paupers.”... During the debate over the Naturalization Act of 1790, Madison declared, “I do not wish that any man should acquire the privilege [citizenship], but such as would be a real addition to the wealth or strength of the United States.”...

The open-borders Left is out of touch with law, history, and tradition
 
... Under Section 212(a)(4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), an individual seeking admission to the United States or seeking to adjust his status to permanent resident (obtaining a green card) is inadmissible if the individual “at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status, is likely at any time to become a public charge.” Section 237(a)(5) contains the deportability provision for public charge. Among the factors that are to be assessed when making this determination are “assets, resources, and financial status; and education and skill.” In addition, section 213(a) empowers the attorney general to require sponsors to sign an affidavit agreeing “to maintain the sponsored alien at an annual income that is not less than 125 percent of the Federal poverty line.”...
 
Yet over the past few decades, with the concurrent growth of the welfare state and mass migration from largely impoverished countries, this law has not been enforced at all. We have illegals costing America hundreds of billions in education, welfare, health care, and child care costs and, recently, in taxpayer-funded legal aid, contrary to law....
 
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