The California Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CA) welcomes President Biden’s review of the “public charge” order, which created serious barriers for certain low-income immigrants receiving public aid from being awarded green cards or temporary visas and encourages the administration to act quickly to rescind the rule. The new rule allows the government to significantly expand the list of factors to determine whether a person will be considered a “public charge.”
These factors can disproportionately discriminate against people that have experienced social-economic hardship and/or who have intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families.
CAIR, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, said the public charge order created barriers for millions of low-income immigrant families to receive critical health care support during the COVID-19 pandemic, other nutritional services during a national hunger crisis, and other safety-net programs.
CAIR San Francisco Bay Area’s Immigrants Rights’ Attorney, Amir Naim, said in a statement:
“The Biden administration must move quickly to reverse the harsh and discriminatory policies enacted by the Trump administration. The Trump administration’s policies created a lot of uncertainty and stress as people were threatened with being indefinitely separated from their family members or being forced to live in the shadows merely because of their income. It is incumbent on the Biden administration to quickly take steps to right these wrongs.”
CAIR Los Angeles’ Immigrants Rights’ Attorney, Amina Fields, said in a statement:
“This rule is not aligned with promoting family unity that is one of the core values of our immigration policies. President Biden’s administration must rescind the prior administration’s public charge immigration rule and deliver on their promise to restoring humanity in the immigration processes to repair the harm caused by the previous administration.”
Last year, CAIR decried a U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed the Trump administration to change the public charge immigration rules.
Three years ago, CAIR joined the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) and the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), co-chairs of the Protecting Immigrant Families, Advancing our Future campaign (PIF), and over 1,100 other organization in an open statement strongly opposing this proposed rule and urged “the Administration to withdraw this dangerous proposal and work with us to build policies that support immigrants as healthy, productive and successful members of America’s communities and families.”