Trump New Healthcare Ban Threatens The Legal Immigration System

By: Aaron Reichlin-Melnick www.immigrationimpact.com/

President Trump invoked the same legal authority used for the Travel Ban to impose a sweeping new ban on legal immigration last week. Under the new ban, which analysis suggests could block as much as two thirds of all immigrants from coming to the United States, immigrants will be banned from entering unless they can prove they will be covered by private health insurance within 30 days of entry. The ban is set to go into effect on November 3, 2019.

Immigrants will also be permitted into the United States if they can prove they are wealthy enough to pay for any “reasonably foreseeable medical costs” out of pocket. However, the rule does not provide any guidance on what constitutes a “reasonably foreseeable medical cost” and leaves it up to the Secretary of State to create new rules implementing the Ban.

Depending on how those rules are written, the Healthcare Ban could impose a direct wealth test on immigrants; a stark rejection of the principles of immigration that have guided America for generations.

Like the Travel Ban which was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court, this new ban invokes a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act. That provision allows the president to declare that the entry of “certain” noncitizens is “detrimental to the United States.” As with the Travel Ban, those subject to this ban will be denied visas and barred from entering the United States as permanent residents.

Under the new Healthcare Ban, immigrants must demonstrate that they will be covered by private health insurance. In addition, subsidized health insurance plans purchased through the Affordable Care Act exchange would not be counted. This could create a huge hurdle for immigrants lacking employer-provided health insurance.

The Healthcare Ban could lead to nearly 70% all legal immigrants being denied entry. According to the Migration Policy Institute, 34% of recent legal immigrants are uninsured, and an additional 31% have health insurance plans that wouldn’t qualify under the Healthcare Ban.

The requirement to purchase unsubsidized health insurance will provide a particular hurdle for immigrants.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the majority of individual health insurance plans purchased on the individual market are subsidized plans—which would not count as health insurance for the purpose of the Ban. Out of 13.7 million people who enrolled in the individual market in the first quarter of 2019, two thirds of the total (9.3 million) received subsidies.

The Healthcare Ban does provide some exceptions, including one for minor children of U.S. citizens and immigrants who are already in the United States. There is also a limited exception for parents of U.S. citizens, who still must prove that their healthcare “will not impose a substantial burden on the United States healthcare system.”

The Healthcare Ban comes just days before the Trump administration’s much-attacked new “Public Charge” rule goes into effect on October 15. That rule sought to limit legal immigration by expanding the groups of immigrants excluded as “public charges” because they might use public benefits in the future.

But the Healthcare Ban sweeps far more broadly than public charge, targeting even immigrants who would easily meet that rule’s new standards.

Given the extreme damage that the new ban would do to legal immigration, legal challenges are likely. President Trump has made his dislike for immigrants who use public benefits clear, and his general anti-immigrant attitude is likely to form one basis for the lawsuit. And unlike the Travel Ban, where much of President Trump’s statements occurred before he became president, challengers will be able to draw on a long list of anti-immigrant actions and rhetoric taken throughout his term in office.

 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4527-New-Healthcare-Ban-Threatens-The-Immigration-System.html

Rural Communities Get Boost From Growing Immigrant Population

Written by Walter Ewing

In rural communities throughout the United States , immigration has been a demographic lifeline that offsets—at least in part—the dwindling number of native-born Americans. In fact, as a report from the Center for American Progress (CAP) explains, there are many rural areas in which schools, hospitals, and businesses would have shut their doors if not for an influx of immigrants . 

CAP analyzes 2,767 “rural places”—characterized as such by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Of all the rural places that fit this definition and are the focus of the CAP report, 68 percent (or 1,894) have experienced a shrinking population since 1990 due to a declining number of native-born residents. Of these 1,894 locales, more than three-quarters (78 percent) would have experienced an even greater population decline if not for immigration. 

Places that are experiencing declines in population size eventually find that they are no longer able to sustain the same level of essential services that they could when the population was larger. As CAP explains, the result can be school consolidations or school closures; hospital closures and reductions in healthcare services more broadly; and closures of various small businesses and public institutions such as grocery stores, gas stations, and libraries. This downward spiral can be avoided if immigration offsets the shrinking native-born population. 

Citing the USDA, the CAP report notes that while immigrants are adding to the populations of rural areas in general, the number of native-born residents has declined due to falling birth rates (a trend also observed in the United States as a whole), the desire among many young adults in rural areas to move to larger cities with more opportunities, and a sharp increase in mortality rates among working-age adults (due in large part to the opioid crisis). Plus, as the USDA also observes, more than 500 rural counties nationwide have been absorbed by expanding urban areas since 1974. 

As the CAP report highlights, the contributions of immigrants to rural areas as a whole go far beyond simply increasing population size. There is no shortage of rural communities in which immigrants provide much-needed labor on farms , open new small businesses , and serve as healthcare providers in medically underserved areas. While it is true that some communities fight against these demographic trends, there are others that treat immigration as a vital economic resource to be managed—not feared. 

For instance, the CAP report singles out one rural place in particular—St. James, Minnesota—as an example of a community that actively seeks to integrate immigrants into its economic and social fabric. When Latino immigrants began arriving in St. James in the 1970s and 1980s to work at the Tony Downs Foods Company, political and business interests crafted a welcoming strategy so that immigrant workers and their families would feel at home. Among other initiatives, these leaders tried to make services more accessible to the newcomers through English as a Second Language (ESL) programs in schools and translation of important documents into Spanish. 

Unfortunately, some rural locales have not followed in the footsteps of St. James in treating immigration as a resource. CAP observes that one of the more notorious cases is that of Hazelton, Pennsylvania , where a local ordinance passed in 2006 fined landlords $1,000 per day for renting to undocumented immigrants and a five-year business license suspension for any employer hiring an undocumented worker. 

The ordinance was eventually struck down by a federal judge and the local government was ordered to pay more than a million dollars in legal fees. In hindsight, even some fervently anti-immigrant residents of Hazleton have reconsidered their positions. Mayor Joseph Yanuzzi, a supporter of the ordinance, came to realize that immigrants were revitalizing the small business community, filling what would otherwise be vacant apartments, and keeping school enrollments higher than they otherwise would have been. 

The CAP report emphasizes that many rural communities can and do devise smart strategies for integrating newcomers into the fabric of their economy and civic life. This speaks not only to the humanity of the native-born population in these locales, but to the economic (and demographic) importance of immigrants themselves. 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com

http://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a3898-Rural-Communities-Get-Boost-From-Growing-Immigrant-Population.html