The Biden administration is trying to roll back another hard-line immigration policy enacted under then President Donald Trump, a rule that made it easier to deny immigrants green cards if they obtained certain government benefits, like housing vouchers or food aid.
But Texas and other Republican-led states are vowing to fight the change.
Rosario Rodriguez, an immigrant from Mexico remembers riding a roller coaster of emotions about the possibility of finally getting a green card.
“Yo estaba como bien emocionada verdad? Porque al fin iba ser residente legal de aqui, de Estados Unidos,” Rodriguez said at a virtual press conference held by advocacy groups. She was excited, she said, because she would finally become a legal resident of the United States.
Initially, Rodriguez believed she needed to cancel her children’s food assistance and Medicaid benefits.
It turns out, Rodriguez's children already were U.S. citizens, so it didn’t matter that they had received the aid.
Advocates say her story shows the fear and confusion in the immigrant community about accepting public benefits.
“They keep to themselves that experience, because they don't want to take a risk when they apply for legal status,” Ramona Casas, a Social Justice Coordinator & Community Organizer at ARISE Adelante, an organization that helps those in the rural communities of the Rio Grande Valley said.
Last week, the Biden administration took the final step to unwind former President Donald Trump’s expansion of the so-called public charge policy which seeks to deny permanent resident status to anyone deemed to be a burden to the U.S.
The expansion is now scheduled to end in December, although the original public charge rule which could reconsider citizenship for accepting welfare will remain in place.
“We want to see that and other policies and other barriers to benefits removed for low-income people of color. But we'll take this as a win in our broader fight,” Esther Reyes, the Director of Immigration Policy & Advocacy at the Children’s Defense Fund-Texas, told Spectrum News.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading a coalition of states urging the Supreme Court to strike down the Biden administration’s rollback. Paxton argues inflation is a burden and “it’s completely reprehensible to expect taxpayers to foot the bill for hundreds of millions of dollars to sponsor more and more illegal aliens.”
Reyes says it's important to clarify that many of the people who are subjected to the public charge test don't qualify for public assistance programs.
“That's a fundamental misunderstanding and an intentional reframing of what is actually happening. It's more fear-mongering, right, that we're seeing, and it's intended to cause more confusion among immigrant communities,” she added.
The number of Texas children on benefits under Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program dropped from 2017 to 2020.
Advocates say this is, in part, because of the expanded public charge rule.
There’s a coalition of advocacy groups in Texas who are now taking steps to educate immigrants and immigration attorneys about the updated policy.
“We do neighborhood meetings, and we do residential gatherings, and they can ask any questions and they explain about the regulation and all of that for their families,” Casas said. “By agencies at the local level and they can sit down with them and explain to them. So this is how we help them. We are in the colonias, in the rural areas. And we there when someone call us we explain also. And this is a good ways to help one-to-one to be more clear about the regulations and understanding more about public charge.”