Trump revives plan to deny permanent residency for use of public programs

Los Ángeles.- The government of US President Donald Trump proposed to grant immigration officials the power to deny permanent residency to applicants they consider may be "a public charge", thus reviving one of its most controversial immigration policies from its previous Administration. The proposal presented by the Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS, in English), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), would repeal the 2022 rule on public charge, which allows immigration authorities to deny entry to the U.S. or the granting of the well-known green card ('green card') to a foreigner who is considered to pose an economic burden on the country. Trump expanded the regulation in 2019 to veto immigrants who had requested social assistance for food, housing, or health care, such as the Medicaid program and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which left many undocumented immigrants without the possibility of opting for permanent residency and caused many families to stop receiving aid for their American children. The administration of former Democratic President Joe Biden (2021-2025) reversed the changes made by the Republican and relaxed the ban, but again the Trump Government has presented changes alleging that government benefits "should not incentivize" immigration.

"Current provisions restrict the ability of DHS officials to make public charge inadmissibility determinations that are consistent with the express national policy of Congress," says the text submitted that will be formally published in the Federal Register this Wednesday.

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The new proposal would not reactivate the rule presented by Trump in his first administration, which in practice would grant greater power to USCIS officers to deny permanent residency to applicants with limited resources, without specifying which programs will be considered as a public charge. For her part, Renee M. Willis, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, urged Congress, dominated by Republicans, to reject the proposed public charge rule, given the problems and legal challenges that similar anti-immigrant regulations have faced in recent years. The measure adds to a recent restriction imposed by the White House to deny immigrant visas to foreigners with chronic diseases, such as cancer and obesity, under the premise that such people could later depend on public health. An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) estimated that the 2019 changes to the public charge policy could have led to a decrease in coverage of between 2 million and 4.7 million Medicaid or CHIP enrollees, including some Americans who are children of undocumented immigrants.