Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute to discuss a new rule impacting immigrants who make use of Public Benefits and welfare. The acting director of immigration announcing the socalled public charge rule earlier this week. This is what he had to say. Through the public charge rule be Trump Administration is reinforcing the ideals of selfsufficiency and personal responsibility and making sure immigrants cansupport themselves and become successful in america. Our rule events aliens who will likely to become a public charge from coming to the United States or remaining here and getting a green card. Become cant support themselves and become successful in america. Our rule events aliens who will likely to become a public charge from coming to the United States or remaining here and getting a green card. Public charge is now defined in a way that make sure the law is meaningfully enforced and that those who are subject to it are selfsufficient. Explainex nowrasteh, public charge and how the rules is interpreted in the past of what the changes are . Guest the idea immigrants who come here should be able to sustain themselves, support themselves financially, either through their own hard work or through support of family members but not through the support of the federal government or state and local governments. The origin or the rule of the role was in the 16 40s in massachusetts, and inherited law in england but they did not apply to foreigners but nativeborn british subjects and if you went to another county and seen as being a public charge, they could move you back to the county where you came from and i can a public charge or a dependent on these programs inyou were in and all a government supplied institution where they pay for all of your food and basically supported to entirely. That was the definition. The 1880s and in 1882 Congress Passed the immigration act of 1882 and that said that those likely to be a public charge are not allowed to enter into the United States, meaning that if they were live in an arms house, the entirely of the welfare state, they would be a public charge depending on services and would not be allowed to come but in 1881 the government passed a law that says if you immigrate to the United States and you become dependent with any first year of being here they can deport you from the country. The first time it was used in deportation. 1999, the government created a rule at that time that set what it needs to be a public charge is a majority of your money income comes from the government. A majority of it. The current rule now states that, if you are likely to use a government benefit in the future, nonmonetary or monetary, medicaid, food stamps, cash benefit, if you are likely to use one of those benefits for 12 months in a 36 month window in the future according to a formula a nonformula, a list of standards by a black box then the government will deny you a green card on that charge. Host who gets to determine likelihood . Guest there are numerous characteristics that deregulation puts in place to determine this. Age, health, assets, how you have used benefits in the past. They did not create a formula. They did not wake the different categories typically and who guess to decide it are Government Employees and the department of Homeland Security and the department of justice and the department of state. Department of Homeland Security for those already in the United States on another visa and seeking to adjust their status to a green card or another visa. ,f you disagree as an applicant you can soothe them because you are in the United States and if youre oversea seeking a green card you will deal with the department of state and if they turn you down you are out of luck. There is no legal recourse. Host more from ken to tonelli more on the rule. Che public charge as an individual who receives one or more Public Benefits for more than 12 months in the aggregate within any 36 month period. Receipt of two different benefits and one month counts as two months. Prospectiverge is and looks at whether an individual is likely at any aint in the future to become public charge as we define it in the regulation. Public benefits are defined as federal, state, and local, and tribal cash assistance, income maintenance, and a small list of noncash benefits. Some examples of the Public Benefits that are part of the rule are general assistance, ssi, snap, most forms of medicaid, and certain subsidized housing programs. The rule does not consider many forms of government assistance that protect children and pregnant Womens Health as Public Benefits. Generally this includes emergency medical assistance, disaster relief, National School chip,programs, ship medicaid for people under 21, or pregnant women, as well as foster care and adoption subsidies, student and mortgage loans, energy assistance, food pantries, homeless shelters, and head start. Host from the white house on monday. Alex nowrasteh, how does this change the face of immigration in the future . Guest not clear how this will affect it because there is no actual formula or waiting theme in the regulation that Government Employees have to follow and we can only presume, based on the intent of the administration and how this rule is more strict, more people will be denied green cars going forward. To give you an example for or historical context, between 2000 and last year 1 likelihoody high that this will increase going forward. Host the public charge rule that was announced this week, you have probably seen it in the news, our topic for the next half hour on washington journal. Alex nowrasteh is our guest. 1 if you are republican. 2027488000, if youre a democrat. An independents call 2027488002. Illegal immigrants call 2027488003. Alex nowrasteh, as folks are calling in, you talk about how much welfare and public assistance american citizens use versus noncitizens and what the costs are. Guest another area of the law that is important is most new immigrants to the u. S. Do not have access to welfare programs immediately when they get here with some exceptions like refugees. A result of this and the fact immigrants have a higher Labor Force Participation rate and other reasons, immigrants are less likely to use welfare programs than nativeborn americans and when they do it is usually at a lower dollar value. A per capita consumption of welfare programs by individual immigrants compared to individual natives who are foreignborn immigrants use about 39 less welfare, including the entitlement program, Social Security and medicare, the largest portions of the welfare state, and the means and medicaid for those in poverty. Host the difference between illegal immigrant you sent those to go through the legal system . Guest and the United States on a legal visa or have a green card now and on a legal visa, you are generally not allowed to use most welfare programs for the first five years you are here but some states can create different rules and some states allow legally present immigrants who are on a green card to get medicaid earlier than other states. The difference is that states have to pay for the difference in money themselves because these programs are funded by a combination of state and federal government. To expandte wants these programs for immigrants in the state not eligible under federal rules, they have to pay the difference. Host how do they do that how many states do that . ,uest 1520 have earlier depending on the welfare, some medicaid earlier and some host that is for legal immigrants . Guest yes. Illegal immigrants usually have no access to Welfare Benefits but a recent change in california is the expanded medicaid to some Illegal Immigrants who qualified and the state of california has to pay for the benefit. Illegal immigrants have access to wics, some emergency medicaid, and other support. Generally it is a small fraction of all welfare state spending in the United States. Host lets talk to callers. Jerry in new jersey you are a first. You are up first. Caller i have two questions. One, i heard democrats over and over on cspan say that the illegals do not get welfare and benefits. Evidently that was not correct. It seven it sounds like trump a meritbasedo system which is been talking about for a couple of years. People, are these illegals, supposedly paying taxes if they cannot get a security number . How is this working . This is such a fraud. How are they paying taxes . Where are they getting Social Security numbers . Guest great question. Generally democrats who say that about welfare and Illegal Immigrants, true but some small exceptions but true some Illegal Immigrants have some small access to welfare programs. It is important to understand that the rule put in place is not about stopping welfare in the United States by immigrants but about reducing the number of cards,who can get green but reducing the number of people who can immigrate to the United States based on the judgment cards, but reducing the number of of a mostly nonreviewable judgment by a government bureaucrat. Host Legal Immigration number four year in the u. S. Per year in the u. S. . Guest about a Million People a , morenter on a green card than half have already been here on another visa, less than half have come from abroad. Host ties that a consistent from the Obama Administration through the trumpet nutrition . Guest it has been Trump Administration . Guest it has been consistent since the 2000s because of statutory design and partly because of chance because a large portion of the immigrants who come into the estates of green cards are three noncap and immediate relatives category, spouses and young children. In terms of the taxes that you legal immigrants pay, Illegal Immigrants pay, between 55 and 75 of illegals immigrants have pay deducted from their paychecks and there are ways to do this, one is by using a stolen Social Security number, and the other way is by an identity loan which is where an individual will let another immigrant use their legal identity for work purposes. Often time somebody will retire and give a nephew or friend their Social Security number and set use this at work. Generally, that is how it is done. Host does the money still going to the system for stolen so security numbers . Guest yes, money paid into the system but the Illegal Immigrants who are doing the work do not have access to the benefits. If theyre using somebody elses Social Security number, that person will eventually have access to the benefits but there are other issues with fraud and stolen Social Security numbers, prevalent taxes, it is not a victimless crime to do that but made necessary unfortunately for a lot of people because of the i9 restrictions that prevent the hiring of Illegal Immigrants which is a government form, when we get a job we shall government id and fill out a form that says where legally allowed to work in the United States and that creates an incentive for Illegal Immigrants to steal somebodys id for employment purposes. When the laws were put in place there was not that much Identity Theft that there is now more because Illegal Immigrants are incentivized to do that because they need the identity to work. Is next in ohio, republican, good morning. Caller good morning. Host go ahead. Caller somebody i know moved to ecuador and when they moved there they had to get an fbi check, police check, fingerprints, they had to provide all kinds of papers and they had to prove that they could take care of themselves. Over there you are entitled to zero. You get nothing. These people come to this country with a shirt on the back and expect the american taxpayer to take care of them and the family and the socalled unaccompanied children. This country is a debtor nation at when they called in our debt, we are bankrupt, the people on welfare here, better wake up. Guest the welfare state is a problem. The way to deal with this is not through a public charge rule that is designed to limit Legal Immigration but instead by building a wall around the welfare state, not around the country, a large report we did about how to do this in the United States and lawful immigrants in the United States have to show, they have to submit Police Records and security records. The caller makes a very good point and that is that the United States fiscal problems are very bad but they are not going to be solved by tinkering with immigration on the edges, they will be resolved by getting the fiscal house in order. Host Mark Krikorian will be on next to talk about everify and he was quoted in the Washington Times today about the public charge rule change, this is what he had to say. This rule is taking a principle that immigrants should be able to pay their own bills and translating it into the modern conditions of the welfare state, we should have done this before and it brings a basic difference of perspective about immigration policy, the purpose of immigration policy to benefit americans already here or is it to benefit the immigrants coming here . Guest that would make sense if there was a value determination to the Welfare Benefits that these folks are receiving. At le as it stands and it will be put in place is not the value of the benefits you use but whether you are in a program or not. If you can about the fiscal impact and Economic Impact of these folks and what they could have, there would be a value determination, how much welfare are they using . If you had 97 of your income that is coming from your own work at 3 from a welfare program, it doesnt matter if it is 3 or 70 as long as you use one program. That is a big problem. The value of Welfare Benefits is more important than whether you are using a program or not. I want to reduce all of it. Host judy in delaware, democrat. Good morning. Caller good morning. Can you hear me . Host yes. Caller i would like to clear up what the definition of illegal immigrant is. Most people get the image that an illegal immigrant is coming from one specific area, more than likely south america or mexico. Would you expound on the fact that there were other illegal aliens coming from europe and other places . Guest yes, thank you. The majority of Illegal Immigrants presently in the United States are from mexico and Central America. Mexicans for the first time dropped below a majority of those who are not legally present in the United States, Central American numbers are going up and caribbean numbers, but there are several hundred thousand from south america, from africa, europe, and asia, as well in the United States. Somebodymmigrant is who is not lawfully present in the United States or they overstayed their visa or entered illegally and they can be removed and imported once they come in contact with immigrations and Custom Enforcement in the United States. A lot of people do not know their immigration status because the laws are second and complexity only to the income tax. It is a simple definition at least on paper. Host janet is a legal immigrant in tucson, arizona. Caller good morning. My question is, how does this new public charge rule affect legal residents wanting to become u. S. Citizens . How will the public charge rule affect them . I also wanted to clarify that legal immigrants can be issued a tax id number to the irs so they do pay taxes. My question really is about the citizenship situation. Host where did you immigrate from and what has been a process for you . Caller i came from columbia at six years old, we came here legally and we had green cards and i was not even aware of the immigration issue until i moved from florida to arizona. In my line of work i deal with a lot of legal immigrants who have tax id numbers. Based on the most recent changes with the tax law, these people do not even get the Child Tax Credit or additional Child Tax Credit as they used to get before and they are now paying significant amount of money into