Washington, DC – Below is a column by Maribel Hastings from America’s Voice en Español translated to English from Spanish. It ran in several Spanish-language media outlets earlier this week:
While Donald Trump creates more obstacles for some applicants for permanent residence by reviving the public charge rule, he also dismisses the contributions both authorized and unauthorized immigrants make through consistent tax payments, and his deportation and detention machinery reduces the labor force and drives up the prices of goods and services.
As part of his anti-immigrant crusade, the president wants to grant immigration officials more discretion to determine whether an applicant for permanent residency could become a public charge.
The rule takes effect on Friday, September 18, and applies to those applying for a green card through a family member, or to permanent residents who have been outside the United States for more than six months and wish to re-enter.
But these are legal residents who are entitled to certain types of income-based public assistance that they would stop applying for out of fear of jeopardizing their application for permanent residency.
In fact, a coalition of states and cities led by Democrats filed a lawsuit against the federal government to challenge the rule.
“This rule preys on that fear and counts on families forfeiting the food assistance, health care coverage, and other public benefits to which they are legally entitled,” New York Attorney General Letitia James stated during a press conference on Monday at City Hall alongside New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and immigrant advocates, the Associated Press reported.
In fact, pro-immigrant groups claim that the rule will particularly affect families with mixed immigration status, where a father or mother may lose their chance to obtain permanent residency because their U.S. citizen child received some form of public assistance—whether health insurance or school lunches.
This is yet another example of a cruel policy that seeks, without congressional approval, to expand the discretionary powers of immigration officials to determine who will or will not be a public charge.
And it is part of an all-out assault on immigrants from every angle, aimed at getting as many of them as possible to choose to self-deport.
But the Trump administration’s immigration raids are not only cruel because of the separation of families and the violence involved.
They also negatively affect the economy—not only the affected families but also the communities, towns, cities, and states where those families live. Consequently, they also affect the national economy.
A family that loses a father or mother—or both—due to detention or deportation no longer has the resources to meet its basic needs, but this creates a ripple effect, as they stop paying mortgages, water, electricity, and gas bills; they stop shopping at supermarkets and stores; and they stop paying sales and income taxes.
Last week, the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) released a study that found that the “Midway Blitz” immigration operation in 2025 caused Latinos and immigrants in Chicago and other Illinois cities to stay home, resulting in a loss of $1.26 billion in economic activity in Cook County over the course of one year.
Likewise, local governments lost $107 million in sales tax revenue during the same period.
“Latinos are workers, consumers, homeowners, business owners, and taxpayers. Our labor and our economic activity are part of what makes the Chicago regional economy function. So when those normal patterns of movement and economic activity are disrupted, the effects do not remain confined to one neighborhood or one population,” stated one of the study’s co-authors, José Miguel Acosta Córdova, a research associate at UIC’s Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, according to a report by the EFE news agency.
The economic effects extended beyond Pilsen and La Villita, Chicago’s traditionally Mexican neighborhoods.
Nationally, these raids reduce the labor force in crucial economic sectors, which drives up the prices of goods and services. The recent report by America’s Voice, End the ICE Tax, concluded, in fact, that “prices are rising more rapidly in the categories that rely most heavily on immigrant labor.”
This is something voters are undoubtedly feeling as the midterm elections approach, even though Trump seems out of touch with reality by reviving “public charge” rules when the only evident burden is the one his immigration policy is imposing on both the humanitarian and economic fronts.
The original Spanish version is here.
