Leaked: Trump Planning Executive Order to Deport Legal Immigrants for Using Social Services
Donald Trump is considering deporting legal immigrants if they are using any type of social service.
The Washington Post obtained two draft executive orders the Trump administration is reportedly considering.
One order deals with work visas; the other addresses social services for legal immigrants who are already in the United States. It’s an indication that the Muslim-ban executive order released last week was just the tip of the iceberg.
The social services executive action would ask the Department of Homeland Security to issue a rule saying that an immigrant can’t be admitted to the US if the person is likely to get any benefit “determined in any way on the basis of income, resources, or financial need.”
People who use any of those benefits and are in the U.S. on visas would be subject to deportation. And the order would even require the person who sponsored an immigrant into the US to reimburse the federal government for any benefits the immigrant used.
Donald Trump is hoping to punish not only legal immigrants in the US and their families, but their family members who are already US citizens.
In the same fashion as the rest of Trump’s policies, the draft order provides no evidence to support the claim that immigrant households are more likely to use welfare benefits, and there is no consensus among experts about immigration’s impact on such benefits or on U.S. jobs.
On the other hand, the Migration Policy Institute has found that dependence on public assistance falls over time and that “refugee men are employed at a higher rate than their U.S.-born peers.”
