In another major win for those wanting to see even stronger immigration enforcement out of the Trump Administration, the Attorney General Pam Bondi-led Department of Justice (DOJ) is shutting down a Clinton-era bureaucratic loophole that has allowed both legal and illegal migrants to access a mountain of taxpayer aid for decades.
As background, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996. The was intended to “strengthen… the principle that [legal and illegal] immigrants come to America to work, not to collect welfare benefits” by forbidding them from accessing welfare programs in nearly all situations, limiting aid to just citizens.
However, the Clinton Administration soon added a loophole in 1997, and allowed migrants, both legal and illegal, to access a vast slew of welfare and aid programs, including food stamps, housing, and healthcare subsidies, along with a great many other aid programs.
Now, the DOJ is slamming the door shut on that loophole, cutting off their access to such programs. Describing the loophole, the DOJ said, in a release on the matter, “This Office concluded in 1997 that the phrase “Federal means-tested public benefit,” as used in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, could permissibly be read to include only benefits administered under mandatory (but not discretionary) federal spending programs. We therefore deferred to two agencies’ interpretation under the Chevron framework.”
Then, describing how the rule has been reinterpreted now to cut off migrant access, it said, “Having been asked to reconsider in view of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 144 S. Ct. 2244 (2024), we now conclude that the best reading of “Federal means-tested public benefit” is its plain meaning and withdraw our earlier opinion.”
Continuing with that, it explained, “A “Federal means-tested public benefit” is any federal public benefit for which the eligibility of an individual, household, or family eligibility unit for benefits, or the amount of such benefits, or both, are determined on the basis of the income, resources, or financial need of the individual, household, or unit—regardless of the funding sources for that federal public benefit.”
So, with that new change to the rule via the DOJ’s change in interpretation of a key term, both legal and illegal migrants will no longer be able to claim access to most public aid programs, such as welfare, food stamps, housing aid, and the like, with the Trump Administration’s Housing and Urban Development agency issuing a federal register notice about the matter as well, noting that non-citizens will be cut off from housing aid.
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The public aid cutoff is seen as a big win not just because it will save money for American taxpayers by limiting the number of people to whom aid will be sent, but also because it is expected to force illegal aliens and other economic migrants, particularly families reliant on taxpayer aid, to leave the country and travel back to wherever they originally came from because they will no longer be able to afford housing, food, healthcare, and like expenses in the US.
Further, the move is being seen as something that, in driving out a great many illegal aliens and legal migrants quite quickly, will help improve employment prospects for Americans while also pushing down key costs, such as rents, by limiting the amount of demand without decreasing supply.
Watch Stephen Miller sound off on welfare abuse by migrants in Minnesota here: