Western Center has submitted comments to the Department of Homeland Security in opposition to the Trump administration’s proposed Public Charge rule changes, joining over 150,000 others. An excerpt from Western Center’s comments are below, and the full comments are available here.
As California’s oldest and largest legal services support center, we have over
50 years’ experience fighting to reduce poverty in our state through the courts, the
legislature, and by working with state and local agencies to ensure our laws are fair and
justly implemented. We can speak directly to which federal and state policies serve to
reduce poverty in our communities thus benefitting our state and country as a whole
and which policies worsen poverty, penalize families struggling to make ends meet, and
hurt us all.
The recent notice of rulemaking proposes sweeping and very harmful changes to the
current public charge test – the test used to determine which immigrants are
inadmissible when they seek to enter the country or adjust their status to that of
permanent residents. The proposed regulations would punish immigrants, mostly those
who are people of color, for any use of a broad swath of public benefits, including
health, nutrition, and housing assistance, and further punish low-to-moderate income
families solely for their lack of wealth. This would be a radical departure from current
agency guidance that limits public charge determinations to those who are primarily
dependent on cash benefits and long term care medical services, and even then, only
after examining the totality of the circumstances.
Simply stated, laws and regulations that increase barriers to safe and affordable
housing, food, and health care are not only harmful in the short run, they have been
proven to have lasting detrimental effects throughout the lifetime of an individual and
even on the next generation. In other words, harsh and punitive short term spending
cuts generally backfire by decreasing the ability for individuals to support themselves
and their families. People cannot go to or do their best at work or school when they are
hungry or sick.
