Trump administration announces rule that could make green card rejections easier
The Trump administration released a regulation Monday that could dramatically cut the number of legal immigrants allowed to enter and stay in the US by making it easier to reject green card and visa applications.
The rule means many green card and visa applicants could be turned down if they have low incomes or little education, and have used benefits such as most forms of Medical, CalFresh, and housing vouchers, because they’d be deemed more likely to need government assistance in the future.
About 200,000 people in Monterey County rely on social services, and now a portion of those who are immigrants have a reason for major concern.
“Before it was a certain income that you or your petitioner needed to have made, and if you met that income threshold you would be okay. Now that is no longer sufficient, and they’ll be looking at a whole list of different factors” immigration attorney Magnolia Zarraga said.
Eric Reles is a legal immigrant with a green card but hopes to one day become a citizen, however he relies on medi-cal, one of the services that could risk him being denied citizenship.
“If I don’t have that benefit what am I going to do? Be in debt my whole life?” Reles said.
In 2016 just over 1,000 people were denied visas on the basis of public charge. As of last year, that number’s jumped to over 13,000 and with this new change it would guarantee many more.
“We will have to do more pre-planning before an immigrant files paper work to legalize, because receipts of certain benefits will now harm their case,” Zarraga said.
According to Zarraga, over the past year they’ve been getting calls from confused residents about whether they’ll be effected by this.
“There are U Visa holders, T Visa, victims of trafficking, and domestic violence survivors. There are a whole host of immigrants who are not even effected by this rule,” Zarraga said.
The trump administration says the rules won’t impact immigrant children who are U.S. citizens.
The rule will go into effect October 15. It is prospective, so only the cases following the 15 of October will be effected.
Immigration advocate groups say they plan to file a lawsuit challenging this new public charge rule.
