December 14, 2018. In this op-ed by Steve Tobocman, executive director of Global Detroit, he argues that the Trump administration’s proposed “public charge” rule will go against the United States’ history of refugee resettlement and the country’s welcoming legacy. This rule would withhold green cards from immigrants who have used specific public benefits or are likely to use them in the future. Tobocman highlights the importance of immigrants to Michigan, who reversed the state’s population decline and how the “public charge” rule will effect the hardworking and legal immigrants who are important for the aging workforce in Michigan.
While all of those issues are critically important—redefining our national character and changing America’s legacy as the world’s most welcoming nation with a history of providing refuge to the persecuted—the future of U.S. immigration policy is very much at stake due to an issue you probably have never heard about: a federal rule proposed by President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security to take an obscure, rarely-used piece of immigration law known as the “public charge” and expand it to monstrous proportions.
According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, this proposed rule will impact as many as 24 million people in the U.S., including more than 8 million U.S.-citizen children born to immigrant parents. The impacts will include close to a million legal residents applying for green cards every year, as well as hundreds of thousands of new visa applicants who, often after waiting more than 10 years for the opportunity to come to America, may now find the doors closed to their chance to live the American Dream.
Here is the link to The Detroit News.