President Donald Trump said that immigrants would not be allowed to enter the United States unless they prove that they will not be a burden on the US healthcare system.
The Trump administration said taxpayers are already ending up footing the cost when medical bills are not paid. And his administration hopes that the new law will keep immigrants from causing more problems.
He said people who want to legally immigrate to the United States must prove that they can be able to cover their own healthcare costs without putting a burden on the government.
Hans von Spakovsky, an American attorney and a former member of the Federal Election Commission, said that the new law “simply expands on existing law.”
Von Spakovsky, who is the manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative, said, “Congress has put this into the law more than 100 years ago. That they didn’t want to bring immigrants who are going to become a public charge. And by that, they mean as soon as they get in, they’re starting to draw welfare benefits.”
The new rule requires immigrants to provide proof of their healthcare coverage because unpaid medical bills have already exceeded to more than $35 billion a year for the last 10 years.
Critics said that the Trump administration has been implementing another wealth test on people who immigrate to the states.
The new rule has a few exemptions, including asylum seekers and refugees. However, Charanya Krishnaswami, the Advocacy Director for the Americas at Amnesty International USA, thinks that the new rule is just another effort by the president to exclude low-income immigrants and include wealthy ones. She said, “Because those sorts of publicly-subsidized exchanges – Medicaid, Medicare, subsidized insurance under the ACA – those folks would not qualify under the terms of the ban. So we’re looking at potentially two-thirds of immigrants in the future who could be affected by a ban of this size.”
