Making It Harder to Become an American: Reviving the Public Charge Rule

Immigration seems to be caught in a continual tug-of-war between presidential administrations, with policies often changing whenever the White House changes hands. One president enacts a law or rule, the next retracts it. The Public Charge Rule is one such regulation that draws scrutiny and shifts as politicians try to decide what conditions represent an immigrant’s ability to support themselves and not become a drain on American society. Recently, President Donald Trump tightened requirements, making it more difficult for green card holders to gain citizenship if they rely on benefits or aid.

Expanding Public Charge Rule

Federal law requires those who wish to become permanent citizens to show that they will not become a public charge, but exactly what that means can vary by administration. President Trump’s interpretation expands the grounds for disqualification and rescinds changes made by Joe Biden’s administration that eased the way for immigrants to remain in the country.

“The Trump administration is upholding the rule of law and protecting American taxpayers from subsidizing aliens who may become dependent on public benefits,” Zach Kahler, a spokesperson for US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), said in a statement. “USCIS is committed to safeguarding the safety, security, and financial well-being of Americans.”

Rescinding the Biden rule “aligns with long-standing policy that aliens in the United States should be self-reliant and government benefits should not incentivize immigration,” the final rule stated.

Although the new rule does not say which specific benefits or programs could be considered a public charge, it gives officers the ability to make “individualized, fact-specific public charge inadmissible determinations, based on a totality of the alien’s circumstances.” Furthermore, the rule says that “using good judgment and discretion, officers will more accurately assess an alien’s likelihood at any time of becoming a public charge.”

The federal government “is reaffirming the requirement of self-reliance, protecting public resources and ending policies that encouraged dependency on the backs of hard-working American taxpayers,” USCIS said in an X post. “Under President Trump, USCIS is restoring the basic principle that immigrants must be able to support themselves.”

Some, however, are quick to criticize the president and the rule. “The reach of this rule extends far beyond immigrants coming into the United States. It is designed to punish the citizens this administration dislikes: those in mixed-status families,” American Immigration Lawyers Association Executive Director Benjamin Johnson said in a statement. 

Johnson further claimed that “citizens who are fully eligible for benefits will forgo health care, nutrition assistance, and other basic supports out of fear that using them could jeopardize a loved one’s immigration status.”

And Sarah Krieger, the senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center had to bring white privilege into the equation: “With this new rule, they are sowing fear and chaos to ultimately reshape America into a country where only the few who are white and ultra-wealthy are welcome.”

Taking a Deeper Dive

The public charge rule is not new. In fact, it has been around since long before Trump took up residence in the Oval Office. Before there was even a federal immigration system, colonies – and later states – had “poor laws” that were designed to prevent local governments from having to pay to support newcomers. For example, in 1637, Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted laws that allowed towns to remove those who tried to settle in the area who might become a financial burden on the community. During the 1600s and 1700s, other colonies such as Virginia and Pennsylvania also adopted “settlement” and “poor relief” laws.

Although these weren’t exactly the public charge law we know today, they were designed with the same principle – to make sure communities would not shoulder the financial burden of providing for new hopeful residents who could not support themselves. 

On August 3, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Immigration Act of 1882, the first federal law to include a public charge provision. “The 1882 Immigration Act adopted as federal law policies and practices already enacted by the states of New York and Massachusetts that targeted poor immigrants for exclusion and removal,” Immigration History explained.

Aliens not considered appropriate to obtain citizenship included “any convict, lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.” The law was expanded in 1891 to include a similar but braoder list: “all idiots, insane persons, paupers or persons likely to become a public charge, persons suffering from a loathsome or a dangerous contagious disease, persons who have been convicted of a felony or other infamous crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, polygamists, and also any persons whose ticket or passage is paid for with the money of another or who is assisted by others to come.”

Americans have always valued helping neighbors in times of need, but charity is strongest when it is given freely, not compelled without limits. Every sovereign nation has both the right and duty to protect its citizens and carefully manage the resources entrusted to it while welcoming those who seek to build a better life. Most people would never walk up to a stranger’s home and expect to be given food, shelter, and financial support indefinitely without permission or contribution. The public charge rule has existed in one form or another for most of America’s history because it reflects a principle that predates even federal immigration law: Liberty flourishes best when people are encouraged to stand on their own feet rather than depend on others.