This event has been canceled. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Please join us for a call on Thursday, April 19, at 10:00 a.m. to discuss planned, sweeping federal regulations that will affect legal immigration and work-authorized immigrants and their family members already in the United States. We’d like to update you on our planned work around these new regulations and get the input of our Business Alliance members.
According to The Washington Post and Vox, the administration is preparing federal regulations that will impose sweeping new restrictions on both legal immigration to the United States and work-authorized immigrants and their family members already in the United States. The regulations will expansively redefine the meaning of the “public charge” exclusion, a provision added to U.S. immigration law at the same time as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
The new definition would deny visas to most immigrants with incomes below 250 percent of the federal poverty level—$61,500 for a family of four—as well as immigrants who are determined “likely” to be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit, subsidized health insurance, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and many other income-tested benefits. Previously, only immigrants who were determined likely to end up institutionalized or wholly reliant on means-tested cash assistance were excluded as public charges. The most recent draft version of the rule acknowledges that the change will “erode family stability and decrease disposable income of families and children.” However, the administration claims the change is “not economically significant”—perhaps because it wants to avoid doing the additional economic and distributional analysis required before adopting economically significant regulations. There is little question, however, that the rule in its current form will have large impacts on the U.S. economy, businesses and employers, work-authorized immigrants in jobs paying below-average wages, and local and state governments.
Call-in information will be provided upon registration. Please contact Robin Gardiner at [email protected] for further questions or inquiries.