GOP's budget package proposes to cut benefits and raise fees for legal immigrants

By Ximena Bustillo

The Senate will soon consider a measure that cuts social safety net programs for several groups of legal immigrants, including refugees and asylum seekers, and aims to make the immigration process more expensive.

The House last week passed a sweeping bill to advance much of President Trump’s agenda, including immigration-related measures that deal with food assistance, health care and education. The goal is to save money and send a signal that Republicans are tough on immigration.

But, if approved by the Senate, immigration advocacy groups say hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants could lose access to vital services.

“It’s not normal,” said Shelby Gonzales, the vice president for immigration policy at the left-leaning think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “I’ve never seen an attempt quite this harsh to try to really kick people out of being able to qualify for different benefit programs.”

Immigrants without legal status already do not qualify for federal benefits such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, medical coverage or federal student aid for college students. But several groups of “noncitizens” do. That includes people admitted into the country on refugee or asylum status and through various parole programs.

The bill, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would make up to 250,000 people in the country legally ineligible for SNAP. CBO estimated limiting that benefit would save $4 billion over the next 10 years, out of some $286 billion cuts to the program over that time period.

The measure also includes provisions creating new or higher fees for various immigration-related services. This includes a $1,000 fee for asylum applications, which currently does not exist.

Asylum applications fluctuate year to year, but recently hundreds of thousands of people have applied for asylum in the U.S. each year to escape persecution or violence in their home countries. Advocates say the vast majority wouldn’t be able to afford this fee.

“If you compare the fees in this bill to existing fees, the changes are so astronomical that it becomes really clear that these are not fees, but they’re penalties,” said Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center.

Long-term effort to limit benefits

Gonzales said generally, few noncitizens in the U.S. participate in benefits programs. In many cases, they already have to wait five years before being eligible for programs such as SNAP and Medicaid.

“It’s always been a concern that we have a lot of people who are income-eligible, immigration-eligible, but are not participating because they were fearful of interacting with the government for one reason or the other,” Gonzales said.

Republicans in Congress have long sought to limit access to public benefits for immigrants — dating back to 1996, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for more restrictive immigration policies.

“These will save some money and it will have some increased impulse to leave on your own,” he said, adding that both would be limited. “It is unlikely this has much deterrent effect on people that aren’t here already because immigrants don’t generally come here for welfare.”

During the first Trump administration, immigrants were discouraged from using public benefits through a policy called “public charge.” That meant that the use of a safety net program could be considered when determining whether someone should be granted further legal status, such as a green card.

This term, the Trump administration is taking a more direct approach by falsely claiming there is widespread use of these programs by immigrants without any legal status. In February, Trump issued an executive order to end “all taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens.”

For example, only about 1% of over or underpayments for SNAP were related to eligibility for citizenship. This data also does not indicate those without legal status were fraudulently using the program.

Since Trump’s executive order, various departments including Housing and Urban Development and Agriculture, have launched their own efforts to find mispayments or benefits to people based on their immigration status.

“It’s extraordinarily concerning that so many children and adults are going to be harmed in this way, all under a guise that’s incorrect,” Gonzales said. “This is a false narrative about people who are undocumented getting access to services.”

Krikorian said the only way parents without legal status could access these benefits is if they apply on behalf of their U.S. citizen children — a policy the bill would not seek to change.

How the bill makes cuts to accessing federal programs

The measure the House passed would broadly strip access to public benefits for refugees, asylees, most people granted parole and survivors of trafficking and domestic violence in the U.S. who were granted select protections from deportation.

Last-minute negotiations resulted in eligibility protection for SNAP access for people with green cards, certain Cubans and people residing in the U.S. under the Compacts of Free Association (COFA), which includes people from Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands.

“These programs are never designed to incentivize those who enter the country illegally,” said Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., during a budget hearing on the measures. “And this is an American safety net,” he added, and it shouldn’t be extended to noncitizens.

The bill would make lawfully present immigrants — but not green card holders or citizens — ineligible for Medicare and for health care coverage on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces. Those changes would also apply to those who are in the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. DACA recipients were brought to the U.S. as children and have protection from deportation but no permanent status. The CBO has not released estimates for these provisions.

“We have to do these things. We have to make hard choices, and this isn’t a hard choice to keep people out of our taxpayer dollars who are in this country illegally,” said Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., during a markup in the House Ways and Means, which debated some of the health care provisions.

Other provisions make legal immigration more expensive

In addition to higher fees for asylum applications, people seeking to renew their work permits, obtain temporary protected status, or make various requests or filings in immigration court would also face new fees, or increases of hundreds of dollars.

Anyone caught trying to enter the U.S. illegally would have to be fined $5,000, in addition to facing criminal and civil charges.

The revenue from the fees, according to the legislation, would go toward U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which processes immigration applications like green cards and visas and is already mostly funded by the fees collected with these services. Funds would also go toward other parts of the immigration system, including immigration courts.

“It’s not implausible to say that you need to pay a fee as well, because our employees in USCIS are the ones doing all the work in assessing the applications and then, of course, in the DOJ, the immigration judges,” said Krikorian, from the Center for Immigration Studies. “Everyone’s doing work that somebody’s got to pay for.”

But immigration advocates note the fees go far beyond those which existed in the past.

“We see this fitting into the administration’s agenda, which is essentially to make life and well-being untenable for immigrants who are already here in the United States,” said Altman, from the National Immigration Law Center.

Senate spending hawks set to make changes

Senators will have a chance to review the measure in the coming weeks. Several have already voiced concerns the House effort does not go far enough in cutting spending, including in immigration-related provisions.

During a hearing with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., took issue with a $46.5 billion request for border wall infrastructure and construction.

“I know the wall is of great symbolic value but I think we should reassess both the cost and what we want to do since we are controlling 95% of the border,” Paul said, pointing to statistics of record low border crossings in recent months. “I am not calling for no money but I do think the 46 billion is not justified unless we see something else from the administration.”

Immigration advocacy groups hope senators make even more significant changes. The GOP chairs of Senate Agriculture and Judiciary, which oversee SNAP and the fees, did not respond to requests for comment.

“We are looking to members of the Senate to take a fresh eye to this bill and to really calibrate the political choice here,” Altman said. “The American public does not want kids in their neighborhoods and in their schools to begin facing hunger in our own backyards.”