Historians’ Comment DHS Notice of Proposed Rule “Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds” FR 2018-21106 (Oct. 5, 2018) By: Torrie Hester, Hidetaka Hirota, Mary E. Mendoza, Deirdre Moloney, Mae Ngai, Lucy Salyer, and Elliott Young Executive Summary The Notice of Proposed Rule “Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds” by the Department of Homeland Security proposes to change immigration policies with regard to the definition of “public charge” and “persons likely to become a public charge” for purposes of admission into the United States or adjustment of status by lawfully present non-citizens residing in the US to lawful permanent resident status. Current policy defines a public charge as someone who is primarily dependent upon the government for subsistence. The Department of Homeland Security proposes to vastly expand the benefits and other factors that could be considered in determining whether an applicant for admission or adjustment of status is likely to become a public charge. This comment, written by historians whose scholarly expertise lies in the history of immigration and immigration policy, addresses the long history of public charge policy in immigration. Although the proposal focuses on admission/adjustment of status and not deportation, our comment addresses both. The proposed rule change cannot be understood apart from the history of public charge deportations because the two policies, although distinct, have historically evolved together. We also believe that the proposed rule change, if put into effect, will lay the basis for future deportations. Public charge laws have a long history in the United States. Rooted in poor laws stipulating who could and could not reside in colonial towns, these laws became policy governing who could and could not enter states like New York and Massachusetts in the early years of the republic. Although poor laws governed admission to states for Americans as well as foreigners, by the mid-nineteenth century they morphed into proto-immigration laws for individual states. The first federal immigration laws were modeled on these policies, excluding “any convict, lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge” (1882) and any person deemed “likely to become a public charge” (1891). In 1903, the law further stipulated that any foreigner who became a public charge within five years of entry from causes that did not originate in the U.S. was subject to deportation. Since 1903, definitions of public charge and the grounds for exclusion and deportability have remained constant: those deemed deportable must have received cash benefits from the government for subsistence or they must have experienced long-term institutionalization. This remained the case as public benefits expanded during the 1930s and again during the 1960s and 1970s. Means-tested benefits (Medicaid, welfare, SSI, and Food Stamps, etc.) have been available to legal immigrants without repercussion. Although many of these benefits and their availability to immigrants have varied and changed over time, legal immigrants have not been fully barred from access to them, and thus have not been subject to deportation if they used them. We contend that expanding the public charge grounds for inadmissibility, adjustment of status, and deportation would break over 100 years of consistent United States immigration policy. An expanded definition would undermine deeply entrenched historical laws and policies that recognize (1) 1 the nation’s need for immigrants who are able bodied and capable of supporting themselves and their families and (2) our commitment to assist all members of our communities who fall on hard times. The proposed new legal strictures are without social benefit. They are punitive and carry high social costs for public health and welfare. Public charge policy during the colonial era through the nineteenth century The roots of the public charge clause in immigration policy dated back to the colonial poor laws. Following their mother country’s practice, English colonists in America enacted poor laws, which required each town to recognize its permanent residents’ claims for relief if they became destitute. At the same time, the colonial poor laws permitted each town to expel transient beggars, or outsiders who became public charges by entering local almshouses or requesting material support such as cash and clothes. In addition to the removal of needy outsiders, the colonial poor law included provisions to prohibit the landing of paupers and disabled people who were unable to financially support themselves and those deemed likely to become public charges. The law normally required shipmasters to provide bonds for the landing of those passengers. If the shipmasters refused or failed to do so, such passengers were not allowed to land and usually ordered to go back to their places of origin. The early poor laws applied to Americans as well as foreigners, but these laws began to operate as state immigration laws governing the admission and removal of non-citizens in the mid-nineteenth century, largely in response to the influx of impoverished Irish immigrants fleeing famine in their homeland. Two major recipients of Irish immigration, New York and Massachusetts, led the formation of state-level immigration policy. Established in 1847, the Board of the Commissioners of Emigration of the State of New York was authorized to prohibit the landing of “any lunatic, idiot, deaf and dumb, blind or infirm persons, not members of emigrating families, and who . are likely to become permanently a public charge,” unless the shipmaster provided a bond for each of such passengers.1 While most states, including New York, retreated from the practice of pauper removal by midcentury, Massachusetts built upon the colonial practice to create the state’s immigrant deportation law, a development that reflected the particular strength of anti-Irish nativism in the state. In 1850, Massachusetts’ immigration officials began deporting foreign-born paupers in public charitable institutions, such as almshouses and lunatic asylums, to their countries of origin.2 State immigration laws, especially those in New York and Massachusetts, eventually developed into the nation’s first general immigration law, which was applicable to all immigrants except the Chinese, who fell into a special category. In 1882, in response to the Supreme Court’s 1876 ruling declaring state passenger laws unconstitutional, Congress passed the first general Immigration Act. Modeled on existing state laws, the act prohibited the landing of “any convict, lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.”3 The next major general immigration legislation, the Immigration Act of 1891, expanded the inadmissible classes to include “persons likely to become a public charge.” The law also made deportable any foreigners who became public charges within one year of arrival. The steamship company that brought such immigrants to the United States would bear the cost of deporting them.4 Long-term resident immigrants-- those integrated into communities, and often with U.S.-citizen children-- were not subject to public-charge provisions. Instead, their integration into a community made them eligible for support. These state public charge laws laid the foundations for the public charge rules in US immigration policy. 2 It is worth noting that under the colonial, state, and early federal immigration laws, deportation based on the public charge clause applied only to people accommodated at public charitable institutions or who were substantially dependent on public relief for the basic maintenance of their lives. The primary purpose of the public charge provision in federal law lay in preventing recently-arrived immigrants from becoming “inmates of almshouses or charitable hospitals,” and institutional removal served as the basic form of deportation in early US immigration policy.5 Early to Mid-Twentieth Century During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, over twenty-four million people immigrated to the United States, mostly for low-waged, low-skilled labor. Five immigration laws passed between 1882 and 1917 provided grounds for exclusion or deportation on the basis of poverty, mental and physical health, morality, or political belief. “Paupers” and “persons likely to become a public charge” (LPC) accounted for the majority of exclusions and deportations.6 Still, the number of both exclusions and deportations remained small, especially when compared to the numbers admitted. During the 1910s, an average of one million people a year entered the United States. But, in 1916, for example, the Immigration Bureau excluded 10,263 people—just one percent of all arrivals—on grounds that they were likely to become a public charge. That year the government deported only 1,431 immigrants as public charges.7 A crucial component of the public charge provisions for deportation (specified in 1891 and in each subsequent law) was that a person could be deported only if he or she became a public charge “from causes existing prior to his [or her] landing” in the United States.8 In other words, removal was considered a correction to the improper admission of excludable persons. Case law has long held that the grounds for deportability must arise from causes preexisting entry.9 In addition to “causes preexisting entry,” the law specified that one could be deported only if one became a public charge within a set time after entry. The 1891 law allowed deportation within one year of entry for immigrants who became a public charge for causes preexisting entry. Congress passed immigration laws in 1903, 1907, and 1917 that gradually extended the time limit, and by 1917, it stood at five years.10 This is where the time limit stands today. We will discuss the significance of preexisting causes and time limits more below. Enforcement of the LPC provisions in the first decades of the twentieth century was uneven. In inadmissibility cases, LPC was often combined with minor and non-contagious ailments (such as hernia) that were not by themselves grounds for exclusion.