Liability to Be a Public Charge Is Mostly about Health Care
“Entry into the United States by individuals “liable to be a public charge” was first restricted in 1882, and such restriction has repeatedly been reaffirmed as a principle of U.S. immigration law, most recently by the welfare-reform legislation of 1996. Yet, until recent reforms proposed by the Trump administration, health-insurance coverage has not been included in such determinations. That may have made sense in earlier decades, when health-care entitlements were small. But, as health care in 2018 accounted for 64 percent of federal spending on means-tested benefits, this omission looks increasingly outdated”