Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, reacted to a report that the illegal immigrants given protection under the president’s planned executive amnesty will not receive healthcare benefits by arguing there was “a double standard” that would favor the illegals covered under the president’s proposed plan over legal immigrants on Wednesday’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on the Fox News Channel.
“What the New York Times was talking about was just one small part of our healthcare delivery system, and that’s the subsidies under Obamacare. The president has said the 5 million people he’s planning on giving amnesty to will not qualify for that. But there are a couple of other ways that, in fact, these people will be able to access taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits. For one thing, the states have very wide latitude on who they allow to get publicly-funded healthcare services, and a lot of them will be very happy to do that for this population of people who get legalized, because the law says that someone who is ‘lawfully present’ is able to qualify for healthcare benefits in probably most states in the union. So, that’s going to be an enormous cost on taxpayers” Vaughan stated.
She continued “it’s actually a double standard. because legal immigrants have to wait five years before they’re able to access a lot of welfare benefits under federal law…in many ways, they have a double standard for the kinds of criminal histories that are allowed. And if they’re paying, they’re able to get their deferred action at a discount rate from what it would actually cost to process that application if they were applying for a green card. So, there are all kinds of ways that they’re really able to be advantaged over legal immigrants, besides the fact that they don’t have to wait their turn. The president’s going to just sort of unilaterally declare them to be here legally.”
Vaughan added “judging by the way they handled the first executive amnesty, which was Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Only a few people actually got rejected, but nothing happened to them, even though they were rejected. they were not a priority for deportation…we know that nothing’s going to change.”
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