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  • 2017-02-22 (xsd:date)
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  • Did President Trump Sign an Order Barring Undocumented Immigrants from Receiving Welfare? (en)
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  • On 16 February 2017, stories appeared on various dubious web sites that exaggerated the nature of a leaked draft of an executive order. According to the story, the draft was actually a fully-fledged order that had already been signed into effect by President Donald Trump, barring illegal immigrants from collecting public benefits: Not only has President Trump not signed any such order, undocumented immigrants are already ineligible for public benefits under the terms of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. According to the Washington Post, the draft order, titled Executive Order on Protecting Taxpayer Resources by Ensuring Our Immigration Laws Promote Accountability and Responsibility, actually stated: Additionally, the draft said that the government would try to deny admission to any alien who is likely to become a public charge and explore the possibility of deporting immigrants who receive, as the Post reported, a certain amount of public assistance, including Food Stamps, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Medicaid. Such a clause would ignore the fact that food stamps (formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) cannot legally be claimed by undocumented immigrants. The same holds true for both the TANF program. For its part, Medicaid specifies that no federal funding can be used for providing care to undocumented immigrants aside from limited emergency services. As PBS reported, around $2 billion a year (less than 1 percent of the program's cost) is spent on such emergency services. Most reported instances of emergency Medicaid use involve births, though that funding does not extend to prenatal care. The executive order draft did not supply evidence backing the claim that immigrant households are much more likely to rely on public assistance programs, and a 2013 analysis from the Cato Institute found just the opposite: As a further debunking the hoax story, the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration would not confirm or deny the authenticity of the orders. (en)
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