President Donald Trump
But
it would apply to the spouses and parents of US citizens. That could
have an impact on families who are trying to bring their parents to the
US.
Immigrants applying for US visas will be denied entry into the
country unless they can prove they can afford health care within 30 days
of entering or can’t pay for it themselves, according to a proclamation
signed by President Donald Trump.
The new rule, which comes into force on 3 November, will be applied
to people seeking immigrant visas, not those in the US already. It does
not apply to those seeking asylum seekers, refugees or children.
But it would apply to the spouses and parents of US citizens. That
could have an impact on families who are trying to bring their parents
to the US.
The proclamation said immigrants will be barred from entering the
country unless they are to be covered by health insurance within 30 days
of entering or have enough financial resources to pay for any medical
costs.
The Trump administration is trying to move away from a family-based
immigration system and into a merit-based system, and Friday’s
proclamation is another effort to limit immigrant access to public
programs.
The Trump administration earlier this year made sweeping changes to
regulations that would deny green cards to immigrants who use some
forms of public assistance. The White House also directed officials to
recover income-based welfare payments from sponsors, and proposed a rule
requiring verification of immigration status for anyone seeking access
to public housing benefits.
The required insurance can be purchased individually or provided by
an employer, and it can be short-term coverage or catastrophic.
Medicaid for the poor doesn’t apply and an immigrant will not be
able to obtain a visa if using the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies when
buying insurance. Those subsidies are paid for by the federal
government.
Trump has made cutting legal and illegal immigration a centerpiece
of his presidency. The Trump administration said last month that it
planned to allow only 18,000 refugees to resettle in the United States
in the 2020 fiscal year, the lowest number in the history of the modern
refugee program.
The White House said in a statement that too many non-citizens were
taking advantage of the country’s “generous public health programs”,
and that immigrants contribute to the problem of “uncompensated health
care costs”.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan
immigration thinktank, 57% of US immigrants had private health insurance
in 2017, compared with 69% of US-born, and 30% had public health
insurance coverage, compared with 36% of US-born.
The uninsured rate for immigrants dropped from 32%t to 20% from
2013 to 2017, since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act,
according to Migration Policy Institute.
There are about 1.1 million people who obtain green cards each year.
“This new attempt at an immigration ban is as shameless as it is
stunning,” tweeted Doug Rand, a former Obama administration official who
is the co-founder of Boundless Immigration. “It will be chaotic to
implement and guaranteed to separate US citizens from their legal
immigrant spouses and other close relatives.”
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