Court Injunctions Protect Immigrant Families from Imposition — Yesterday — of Trump’s Public Charge Rule
Last Friday, NPR reported the good news: “Federal judges in three states—New York, California and Washington—have issued temporary injunctions against the Trump administration’s ‘public charge’ rule, preventing it from taking effect on Oct. 15.”
For NBC News, Daniella Silva explains exactly how the Trump administration’s punitive rule—which DID NOT go into effect yesterday as planned—would have excluded legal immigrants and their families. An old rule previously denied green cards to immigrants, “who depended on cash assistance or government-funded long-term institutional care.” “The new rule expands the definition to include additional benefits such as food stamps, non-emergency Medicaid, certain prescription drug subsidies and housing vouchers. And the rule would now define public charge as any immigrant who uses or is deemed likely to use at some point one public benefit for 12 months during a 36-month period. Receipt of two public benefits in one month counts as two months, the rule noted. Once labeled a ‘public charge’ immigrants could be denied green cards, visas and other forms of legal immigrant status.”
The judges’ injunctions issued last Friday will delay the imposition of the new rule, described by the NY Times‘ Miriam Jordan as “developed by Stephen Miller, the White House aide who is the architect of several of the government’s hard-line immigration policies.”
The Trump administration’s rule has not been permanently overturned. However, the courts have blocked its implementation while the matter of its constitutionality moves through the court system. Jordan quotes Steve Yale-Loehr, an immigration professor at Cornell Law School: “The court rulings today represent at least a temporary setback in the Trump administration’s attacks on both legal and illegal immigrants… Ultimately, I predict these CONTINUE READING: Court Injunctions Protect Immigrant Families from Imposition — Yesterday — of Trump’s Public Charge Rule | janresseger