THE NEW YORK POST – As the government shutdown continues, the media seem fixated on one Republican talking point: that the Democrats want health care benefits for illegal immigrants. Of course they do.
Part of the way Democrats try to claim otherwise is semantics.
For example, President Joe Biden ballooned the number of illegal immigrants with Temporary Protected Status from 400,000 to 1.2 million during his term.
TPS holders have no legal right to live here, but the government has promised not to deport them until their home country resolves what is supposed to be a major destabilizing condition — a natural disaster, for example, although past administrations have tended to grant and renew TPS for far less.
Similarly, Biden allowed 2.9 million inadmissible migrants to enter the US via “parole,” which, like TPS, gives them a fixed time period to stay before facing removal.
Because these migrants are still considered inadmissible and removable, and their deferred status is temporary, the Department of Homeland Security and outside experts continue to count them as illegal immigrants.
Prior to passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, parolees could access Medicaid after a five-year waiting period, just as legal permanent residents can, and they could also qualify for Obamacare subsidies after one year. TPS holders for their part could access Obamacare subsidies.
Welfare workarounds
The OBBB sunsets all of these privileges, but the Democrats’ proposed budget would restore them. Therefore, the claim that congressional Democrats want to give public health benefits to illegal immigrants is indeed true.
That dispute is minor, however, compared to the broader reality that illegal immigrants already consume public health benefits through other pathways. Perhaps the most obvious is emergency Medicaid …
