President Trump’s administration is weighing more crackdowns to ensure American taxpayers are not footing the bill for the cost of legal immigrant welfare dependents to the United States.

Last year, the Trump administration published a new regulation that made it more difficult for welfare-dependent legal immigrants seeking green cards to permanently resettle in the U.S. The regulation, previous estimates have stated, equates to a nearly $60 billion tax cut for American taxpayers.

A new regulation being weighed by the administration would make sure that American citizen sponsors of foreign nationals for green cards have the means to cover all the associated costs.

“Specifically, this proposed rule would require sponsors and household members who execute an Affidavit or Contract to provide Federal income tax returns for three years, credit reports, credit scores, and bank account information,” the proposed regulation states.

The regulation is designed to have citizens prove they can maintain the required income that it takes to sponsor a foreign national for a green card, whether that be a relative or a possible employee.

Also, the regulation would effectively prevent citizens who are dependent on welfare from sponsoring foreign nationals for green cards unless they have an additional sponsor who has not taken welfare.

“If your income is so low that you qualify for means-tested welfare programs, why should you be allowed to sponsor new immigrants?” Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) Director of Policy Jessica Vaughan wrote in a post of the proposed regulation.

A CIS study has revealed about 63 percent of noncitizen households in the U.S. use at least one form of taxpayer-funded welfare, while only about 35 percent of native-born American households are on welfare. This means that noncitizen households use nearly twice as much welfare as native-born American households.

In California — with the largest noncitizen population in the country at almost 11 million, or nearly 30 percent of the state’s total population — more than seven-in-ten, or 72 percent, of households headed by noncitizens are on at least one form of welfare. Compare that to the findings that only about seven-in-twenty, or 35 percent, of native-born households in California are on welfare.

(Center for Immigration Studies)

Preventing Americans from being forced to foot the bill for welfare for newly arrived legal immigrants is hugely popular among U.S. voters. A Rasmussen Reports poll conducted in 2017 revealed that more than six-in-ten voters, or 62 percent, said they would support a plan that bans legal immigrants from receiving welfare for at least the first five years of their residency in the country. Roughly 67 percent of swing voters and nearly 60 percent of black Americans said they would support such a plan.

Another 76 percent of U.S. voters said welfare users should be mandated to prove that they are not in the country illegally before being allowed to obtain public benefits, including 74 percent of black Americans, 77 percent of swing voters, and 63 percent of Democrat voters.

Currently, there is an estimated record high of 44.5 million foreign-born residents living in the U.S. This is nearly quadruple the immigrant population in 2000. The vast majority of those arriving in the country every year are low-skilled legal immigrants who compete against working and middle-class Americans for jobs.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.