No benefits for illegals? Not so fast…
The health care bill being debated in the Senate joins the one in the House as including benefits for illegal aliens, despite the assurances of Congressional Democrats that this isn’t so. At least that’s the contention of James R. Edwards, Jr. of the Center for Immigration Studies. This came to me last week:
Assurances that the two health-care reform bills would not benefit illegal aliens are not accurate. A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies examines in detail the immigration-related provisions of both the House-passed HR 3962 and the bill now being debated in the Senate, HR 3590. The report concludes that the bills, in their current form, would indeed give illegal aliens access to taxpayer-funded health care well beyond emergency medical treatment.
The report, “Immigration-Related Provisions of Senate and House Health Reform Bills,” is authored by CIS Fellow James R. Edwards, Jr.
Key findings include:
- HR 3962 ensures illegal alien access to the exchange and public option. HR 3590 states illegal immigrants are excluded from these.
- Both bills ostensibly bar illegal aliens from receiving the premium subsidy, and both bills use some form of eligibility verification for the subsidy.
- Both bills expand Medicaid eligibility. Both bills lack verification requirements based on citizenship or immigrant status. Both contain serious loopholes to enroll illegal aliens easily into Medicaid. HR 3962 automatically covers anchor babies.
- The eligibility verification process in each bill falls woefully short of protecting taxpayer liability to cover or subsidize people living unlawfully in the United States. Both the House and Senate bills’ verification processes will encourage large-scale fraud and abuse.
- The Senate bill exempts illegal aliens from the mandate that everyone have health insurance or else face a tax penalty. This perverse exemption treats illegal aliens better than the bill treats American citizens.
After reading the Backgrounder, I see a mixed bag where the Senate bill is better than the House bill in some respects, while in others the reverse is true. Don’t get me wrong, I would like neither bill to pass but the information given out is good in the respect that it gives Congress pointers on how to eliminate weaknesses in our immigration policy. I’m all for legal immigration but having the benefits afforded in our country right now to illegals indeed acts as a magnet for illegally crossing the border, just as Edwards notes in his study.
Admittedly, there are a lot of more important aspects of the health care bill being discussed, and rumor has it immigration gets its turn next year – just in time for the election. So the overall problems will continue to be addressed as the 111th Congress unfolds into its second and final session next year.
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Please note that the opinions expressed on monoblogue are not necessarily those of the Wicomico County Republican Party Central Committee, of which I'm a member. (But they probably should be.)
