Leading experts and observers are highlighting the sweeping nature and far-reaching dangers of Trump’s Friday night executive order seeking to bar from the U.S. legal immigrants who cannot prove they have health insurance.
Yesterday, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimated that the new proclamation could potentially exclude 2/3 of future immigrants, while a must-read piece by Washington Post syndicated columnist Catherine Rampell blasts the administration’s outrageous “sabotage” of our healthcare and our immigration systems.
The new assessments underscore the reaction from America’s Voice Executive Director Frank Sharry, who stated that the executive order amounts to “nothing less than a legal immigration ban,” and is another racially-motivated attempt to “keep out and kick out immigrants and refugees … by administrative fiat – by going around rather than through Congress.”
Below see key takeaways and excerpts from MPI’s estimates and the Catherine Rampell column:
Migration Policy Institute: new executive order “could exclude 2/3 future immigrants”
In a Twitter thread yesterday, MPI estimated that the “new Trump proclamation banning entry of would-be green card holders who can’t prove they’ll have health insurance coverage within 30 days could exclude 2/3 of future immigrants,” with the remaining tweets in the thread explaining their projections and concluding with the assessment that Friday’s proclamation “could be an even stricter test for new immigrants” than the public charge rule (which itself could slash legal immigration by half).
Meanwhile, the column from Washington Post syndicated columnist Catherine Rampell, entitled, “Trump found a way to simultaneously sabotage our health-care and immigration systems,” writes, “the Trump administration has brought back the individual mandate, but for immigrants only.” Excerpt below:
President Trump sabotaged the health-care system. Separately, he’s sabotaged the immigration system.
And now, in a presidential twofer, on Friday night the administration found a way to sabotage both simultaneously.
Unable to repeal Obamacare, the Trump administration has worked to make it less functional and more expensive. It has done this by zeroing out the individual mandate, expanding the availability of cheap but worthless junk insurance and curtailing the annual open-enrollment period, among other actions.
…Simultaneously, of course, the administration has also been undermining our legal immigration system. Emphasis on “legal” here: For all of Trump’s vitriol for undocumented immigrants, he’s also been targeting people who are trying to come to this country lawfully.
Among the creative, non-legislative ways the administration has sabotaged the legal immigration system: huge and arbitrary delays in visa and citizenship application processing; cruel and inhumane treatment of families seeking asylum; reductions in the refugee admissions cap to its lowest level on record; and, of course, the travel ban placed on several majority-Muslim countries.
And then there are all of the policies intended to penalize legal immigrants whom the Trump administration claims are a financial burden.
To be clear: Immigrants are in fact a net fiscal boon to the United States…
…[The] new policy, issued via presidential proclamation, bars issuance of visas to immigrants unless they can prove they will obtain health insurance within 30 days of their arrival in the United States, or otherwise demonstrate that they can pay medical expenses out of pocket.
…That’s right, the Trump administration has brought back the individual mandate, but for immigrants only — the GOP’s supposed commitment to “freedom” notwithstanding.
…Of course there is also a fundamental tension between arguing that uninsured immigrants impose huge costs on the country but uninsured native-born Americans don’t cost anyone anything. But no one said consistency was this administration’s strong suit — aside from its consistent desire to find new ways to destroy as many institutions as possible.
