FROM NBC NEWS: The Trump administration’s expanded ban on immigrants’ access to social services, such as Head Start and Meals on Wheels, could have a “devastating” impact on children of immigrants, including U.S. citizens, hundreds of opponents told the federal government Wednesday.
A total of 372 organizations have coalesced to oppose the administration’s decision to make more federally funded health and human service programs off-limits to immigrants with some form of permission to be in the country.
The groups say the administration wrongly promotes the expanded restrictions as part of its efforts to target illegal immigration. The policy actually “directly targets lawfully present immigrants” by turning early learning centers, community health centers and mental health and addiction treatment programs “into immigration checkpoints” where providers would have to check a person’s immigration status, according to the groups.
“Undocumented immigrants already are not eligible for most federally funded programs. This is another case where the administration is lying to the public,” said Adriana Cadena, director of the Protecting Immigration Families coalition.
The coalition organized the opposition to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) restrictions.
They fear that there will be confusion even among families with children entitled to use a program,, Cadena said, because many families have members with different types of immigration status.
“This is going to have long-term consequences we cannot begin to grasp,” she said.
The White House responded to news of the NBC story by forwarding a link to a July 10 news release by HHS. The release said that the administration was ensuring that public benefits were not “diverted to subsidize illegal aliens.”
“For too long, the government has diverted hardworking Americans’ tax dollars to incentivize illegal immigration,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., stated in the July 10 release. “Today’s action changes that — it restores integrity to federal social programs, enforces the rule of law, and protects vital resources for the American people.”
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