The Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, filed a lawsuit this week against the Biden Administration for violating a federal law that prevents migrants from getting a green card if they have no way to support themselves and will be dependent on welfare services such as Food stamps, Medicaid, Section 8 and other public benefits; those benefits paid for by American tax dollars.
In 2019, President Trump expanded the Federal immigration law requires a “public-charge” determination for migrants, which bans them from taking up residency in the United States if they are likely to depend on government aid.
The lawsuit filed in a U.S. District Court in Victoria claims the Biden Administration “seeks to further its open borders policy by enacting a new agency rule that effectively nullifies federal law excluding aliens likely to become public charges.”
In a statement made to his public website, AG Paxton said,
“The Biden Administration is committed to opening the borders to aliens who lack the ability to take care of themselves. Texans should not have to pay for these costly immigrants, nor should any other American,” said Attorney General Paxton. “I will continue to defend the rule of law and fight to ensure that the massive costs of illegal immigration don’t further burden taxpayers.”
According to a report, “About 63 percent of noncitizen households use at least one form of public welfare, while only about 35 percent of native-born American households are on welfare.” In addition, studies show that American taxpayers are billed more than $1,500 a year per migrant.
The new rule essentially guts the ‘public charge’ rule and, according to the lawsuit, “de-fangs the statutory requirement ‘rendering most family-sponsored applicants automatically inadmissible on public charge grounds unless they obtained an enforceable affidavit of support from a sponsor’ by prohibiting a meaningful evaluation of whether the affidavit is true and correct.”
The lawsuit also asserts that the new rule is “seemingly intended and designed to ensure—and will ensure—that virtually no alien is ever found to be a public charge.”
The 1996 Welfare Reform Act stated, “Self-sufficiency has been a basic principle of United States immigration law since this country’s earliest immigration statutes.”
It required that “aliens within the Nation’s border not depend on public resources to meet their needs” so that the “availability of public benefits not constitute an incentive for immigration to the United States.”
In the last two months alone, nearly 500,000 illegal migrants have crossed the southern border, with more than 4 million illegal migrants crossing since Biden took office.
Cities across the nation are declaring emergencies as the massive influx of migrants prove to be too much for their economies to handle. Denver Colorado declared an emergency in December as illegal migrants have cost the city more than $800,000. In New York City, according to a recent report, illegal migration is on track to cost the city $1 billion a year.
In fact, according to a recent report by The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which regularly tabulates the costs of illegal immigration, “providing for the needs of illegal aliens who entered the country under President Biden adds an additional $20.4 billion annual burden on American taxpayers. This figure is in addition to the well over $140 billion a year cost burden taxpayers are already bearing to provide benefits and services for the longer-term illegal alien population.
Dan Stein, president of FAIR said that money could be spent on helping American citizens by,
- Providing every homeless veteran in America $50,000 per year for a decade, effectively ending veteran homelessness.
- Giving every family in America earning $50,000 or less a grocery voucher of roughly $410.
- Providing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits to more than 7 million additional needy families.
- Funding and expanding the entire National School Lunch Program.
- Hiring more than 315,000 police officers to combat rising crime across the country.
“These are the people President Biden pledged to champion. Instead, he is choosing to divert an additional $20.4 billion away from their needs, in order to fund a radical open borders agenda with no end in sight,” Stein added.
Joe Biden included $785 million in the recent massive $1.7 Trillion spending bill to feed, house and transport illegal migrants. In addition, $1.6 million was needed to address the wellness and prevent the suicides of overwhelmed border patrol agents that are being forced to deal with the historic number of illegal migrants crossing the border each month.
