‘For too long, the government has diverted hardworking Americans’ tax dollars to incentivize illegal immigration,’ the health secretary said.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is rescinding a 1998 interpretation of a law that allowed illegal immigrants to access certain government-funded programs, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said on July 10.
The health secretary is rescinding the interpretation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), a law that said illegal immigrants cannot obtain “federal public benefits.”
The 1998 interpretation by the HHS said the law’s definition of benefits “does not provide sufficient guidance for benefit providers” and that HHS was stepping in “to facilitate compliance” with a requirement in the law for providers to verify a person’s qualifications for benefits.
It said that certain programs, including Head Start, which provides child care for lower-income families, were accessible to illegal immigrants.
That interpretation improperly narrowed the scope of the law, letting illegal immigrants access programs that lawmakers intended only for Americans and qualified immigrants, such as immigrants granted asylum, HHS said on Thursday.
“For too long, the government has diverted hardworking Americans’ tax dollars to incentivize illegal immigration,” Kennedy said. “Today’s action changes that—it restores integrity to federal social programs, enforces the rule of law, and protects vital resources for the American people.”
The updated policy applies the definition of federal public benefit in the law.
The statute defines the benefits as ‘“any grant, contract, loan, professional license, or commercial license” provided to an individual, as well as “any retirement, welfare, health, disability, public or assisted housing, postsecondary education, food assistance, unemployment benefit, or any other similar benefit for which payments or assistance are provided to an individual, household, or family eligibility unit.”
Head Start is among the programs included in the updated and expanded list of classified “Federal public benefits” under the PRWORA, HHS said on Wednesday.
In addition to Head Start, HHS is including about a dozen other programs that were previously excluded. Among them are the Community Services Block Grant, the Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness Grant Program, and the Title X Family Planning Program.
