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Trump Looks to Threat of Welfare Bills to Curb Immigration

Trump Orders Government to Collect Bills for Immigrant Welfare

(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump ordered the U.S. government to enforce a decades-old law that requires Americans who bring migrants into the country to take financial responsibility if they claim welfare benefits, the president’s latest attempt to curb immigration.

Trump directed his administration to spend the next 90 days developing rules for U.S. citizens to reimburse the government for each dollar of means-tested federal aid provided to immigrants they’re sponsoring.

That means Americans who seek to bring relatives to the U.S. could be obligated to pay the government back if the immigrants use programs such as food stamps, Medicaid, or the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program.

“Financial sponsors who pledge to financially support the sponsored alien in the event the alien applies for or receives public benefits will be expected to fulfill their commitment under law,” Trump said in the memo, which was released by the White House on Thursday.

The action comes as Trump has sought to focus attention on the issue of immigration -- which polls show resonate with his core supporters -- as the 2020 campaign gets underway. The memo is the latest step in a series of administrative actions designed to reduce both legal and illegal immigration flows, and comes as the administration is seeking new funding for border security and wall construction on the U.S.-Mexico border.

‘Creating Fear’

Immigration advocates immediately condemned Trump’s move.

“This is bad policy aimed at creating fear and confusion in immigrant communities and another example of how the Trump administration is making cuts to our legal immigration system by further undermining the ability of our already broken system to effectively function,” said Todd Schulte, who leads the pro-immigration group FWD.us

Trump also ordered his administration to determine within 180 days which individuals could lose their ability to sponsor migrants based on delinquency, and says they will be advised that they could be on the hook for any public assistance used by people they have vouched for.

The move relies on language in welfare-reform legislation signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1996.

The law was never fully implemented, and it’s not clear how it would work in practice. The presidential order extends across government, from the Treasury Department, the State Department and Homeland Security, to departments and agencies covering Social Security, education, transportation, housing, health, labor, agriculture and the president’s budget director.

Instead, Trump’s decision -- which was championed by hard-line immigration adviser Stephen Miller -- largely appears to be an effort to deter Americans from sponsoring family members to live in the U.S. Trump has repeatedly criticized what he calls “chain migration,” and has called for the U.S. to adopt a system in which educated and skilled immigrants would be favored for admission.

Enforcement Plans

But the administration’s plans to enforce the requirement aren’t clear.

Federal public assistance programs are administered by different agencies, including Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture. Tracking benefits received by individual immigrants and billing the costs to their American sponsors would require coordination not only across the federal government but also with state and local jurisdictions that distribute the assistance.

Further complicating the task, many immigration records are maintained only on paper. And the new regulation wouldn’t affect sponsors of immigrants already in the country.

The administration has targeted immigrants who use public benefits before, proposing a rule last year that would consider the use of welfare programs as a “negative factor” when making determinations about green cards or temporary visa applications.

Earlier this month, the president unveiled a plan to dramatically overhaul the composition of immigrants entering the country by limiting those eligible based on family connections. Applicants would largely be ranked based on their education, job prospects, and English proficiency, among other metrics.

The White House also is trying to overhaul asylum policy to reduce the volume of migrants seeking refugee status at the southern border.

Yet the plan was essentially declared dead-on-arrival in Congress, in part because it doesn’t address protections for immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children -- a provision that Democrats and some Republicans have called essential.

Trump has also outraged congressional Democrats by declaring a national emergency at the southern border to redirect money from the Pentagon to construction of his promised wall.

To contact the reporters on this story: Margaret Talev in Washington at mtalev@bloomberg.net;Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Justin Blum

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