United States President Donald Trump’s administration unveiled a new rule yesterday that could deny visas and permanent residency to hundreds of thousands of people for being too poor.
The long-anticipated rule, pushed by Trump’s leading aide on immigration, Stephen Miller, takes effect Oct. 15 and would reject applicants for temporary or permanent visas for failing to meet income standards or for receiving public assistance such as welfare, food stamps, public housing or Medicaid.
Such a change would ensure that immigrants “are self-sufficient,” in that they “do not depend on public resources to meet their needs, but rather rely on their own capabilities, as well as the resources of family members, sponsors, and private organizations,” a notice published in the Federal Register said. “The principle driving it is an old American value and that’s self-sufficiency,” Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in a Fox News interview published yesterday.
“It will also have the long-term benefit of protecting taxpayers by ensuring people who are immigrating to this country don’t become public burdens, that they can stand on their own two feet, as immigrants in years past have done,” he said.
The overhaul is part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to curb both legal and illegal immigration, an issue he has made a cornerstone of his presidency. The new rule is derived from the Immigration Act of 1882, which allows the U.S. government to deny a visa to anyone likely to become a “public charge.”