According to Bloomberg news, on May, 23, 2019 President Donald 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. 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,” President Trump said in the memo, which was released by the White House on Thursday.
President 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 order 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.
President Trump 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.
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