The White House is at again, this time, President Trump’s advisor and resident white supremacist weasel, Stephen Miller, has reportedly proposed a new policy that would make it harder for legal immigrants whose families received public benefits such as subsidies for Obamacare or food stamps to get citizenship.
According to CNN, The White House (emphasis on white) has been reviewing the policy, which has reportedly undergone numerous revisions because its so horrible that White House officials have been trying to make it lawsuit proof.
Here’s how the Most Trusted Name in News explains the worst immigrant policy proposal:
The crux of the proposal would penalize legal immigrants if they or their family members have used government benefits — defined widely in previous drafts of the policy.
The law has long allowed authorities to reject immigrants if they are likely to become a “public charge” — or dependent on government. But the draft rule in its recent forms would include programs as expansive as health care subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, as well as some forms of Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit.
The rule would not explicitly prohibit immigrants or their families from accepting benefits. Rather, it authorizes the officers who evaluate their applications for things like green cards and residency visas to count the use of these programs against applicants and gives them authority to deny visas on these grounds — even if the program was used by a family member.
CNN sources note that Miller is unhappy that his proposal has taken forever to be enforced. In order to understand the type of white supremacist asshole that Miller actually is, look no further than his high school years in which, a young but possibly less asshole-y Miller made a speech touting that he couldn’t be the only one who was tired of being told to pick up his trash “when we have plenty of janitors to do it for us!”
The most dangerous part of this new policy, which NBC News notes could impact some 20 million legal immigrants, is that it doesn’t need congressional approval.
A spokesperson for Department of Homeland Security told NBC News in a statement that “The administration is committed to enforcing existing immigration law, which is clearly intended to protect the American taxpayer by ensuring that foreign nationals seeking to enter or remain in the U.S are self-sufficient. Any proposed changes would ensure that the government takes the responsibility of being good stewards of taxpayer funds.”
Executive director of the pro-immigration group America’s Voice Frank Sharry told CNN that the move is apart of a “deeply cynical and cruel strategy” and accused Republicans of “race-baiting.”
“Trump and Miller have concluded that the best 2018 political strategy is a divisive and desperate three-step: 1) do something cruel to immigrants; 2) sit back as Democrats, the fact-based media and the majority of Americans denounce the cruelty; 3) step in and claim that the president is standing up for his white base and against ‘the other’ while working to define Democrats as doing the opposite,” Sharry said. “They did this on DACA. They did this on family separation. Now they are planning to do the same on public charge.”