Proclamation Restricting Visas For Uninsured Signed By Trump
On Friday, the President Donald Trump sings a Proclamation Restricting Visas For Uninsured. Henceforth, immigrants applying for U.S. visas will be denied entry into the country unless they can demonstrate prove that they can afford health care services. The new rule does nltapply to those already in United States but to those applying for visa from abroad. It also does not affect lawful permanent residents, asylum seekers, refugees and children. However, it will affect the spouses and parents of U.S. citizens. This could have an impact on families who are planning to bring their parents into the United States.
Proclamation Restricting Visas For Uninsured
No insurance, no entry
According to the proclamation, immigrants will be barred from entering the U.S. unless they are to be covered by health insurance within 30 days of entering or must have enough financial resources to pay for any medical costs. The measure will take effect from November 3.
The administration of Trump is trying so hard to move away from a family-basdd immigration system and delving into a merit-based system, and this proclamation is another effort to curb immigrant access to public programs.
Earlier this year, the administration of Trump made sweeping changes to regulations that would deny green cards to immigrants who are using some forms of public assistance. However, officials has been directed by the White House to recover income-based welfare Payments from sponsors, and also proposed a rule that requests for the verification of immigration status for anyone who is seeking access to public housing benefits. The required insurance can be provided by an employer or may be purchased individually, and it can be short-term coverage or catastrophic.
Medicaid doesn’t count. An immigrant will be unable to obtain a visa if using the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies when buying insurance. The federal government is responsible for paying for those subsidies.
ACA Catch-22
Larry Leavitt, an executive vice president for health policy at Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy think tank tweeted; “While lawful immigrants qualify for ACA subsidies, they’ll be stuck in a catch-22 due to the fact that subsidized coverage does not qualify as insurance under the proclamation”.
In a statement, the White House said that too many non-citizens were taking advantage of the country’s “generous public health programs,” and also states that immigrants are the ones contributing to the problem of “uncompensated health care costs”.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan immigration think tank, 57 percent of U.S., in 2017, it was discovers that immigrants had private health insurance, compared with 69 percent of U.S.-born, as well as 30 percent immigrants had public health insurance coverage, compared with 36 percent of native-born.
According to Migration Policy, the uninsured rate for immigrants dropped from 32 percent to 20 percent from 2013 to 2017, since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Each year, there are about 1.1 million people who obtain green cards.
“This new attempt at an immigration ban is as shameless as it is stunning, It will be chaotic to implement and guaranteed to separate U.S. citizens from their legal immigrant spouses as well as other close relatives”. Tweeted Doug Rand, a former Obama administration official who is the co-founder of Boundless Immigration“.
