New York City’s socialist-in-chief, Zohran Mamdani, announced Monday that the Big Apple will lead a new lawsuit against the Trump administration challenging a rule that would expand the list of public benefits under which immigration officials can deny green cards to immigrants who are “likely at any time to become a public charge,” that is, to take advantage of welfare benefits. The programs that would be included in the new rule include SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and WIC (Women, Infants, and Children).
During his speech announcing the lawsuit, Mamdani employed the left’s usual scare tactics in an attempt to guilt the administration into doing what he wants. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “People could die” if the government doesn’t give out these handouts.
“The federal government finalized a set of drastic and unlawful changes to our country’s public charge rule, a rule that makes it possible for someone to be denied immigration status based on the likelihood of their need for public benefits,” he said. “It is intentionally vague as a means of creating uncertainty and fear, to isolate immigrant New Yorkers.”
“This is an undisguised effort to strip New Yorkers of the services they rely on, the public benefits they are entitled to,” he continued. “Up to 4 million people from across the country could unenroll from their health care alone. … None of this is abstract. People could die. … Immigrants are New Yorkers.”
Of course, he says this in the kind of rueful tone that could fool some people into thinking this is some great crime or some great overreach by our government.
Never mind that rejecting immigrants who were likely to be on the public dole has been on the books on the federal level since 1882 and has been a state tradition since well before the founding.
Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1882, the first comprehensive federal law on immigration, for this very reason. The law prohibited entry to anyone deemed a “convict, lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a charge.” Not only did the law prevent entry, but it also provided that they should be deported if they were already in residence in the United States.
The Immigration Act of 1882 has been superseded by later immigration laws, but specifically the “public charge” clause remained in effect, was expanded upon, and still remains in effect to this day. But it wasn’t the first “public charge” law in the country. Before 1882, immigration law was largely a state issue.
The earliest public charge law in what would become the United States dates back to colonial Massachusetts in 1645. That law similarly barred entry from abroad, and other colonies, those who were likely to be unable to support themselves without public assistance. Other colonies, like New York and Delaware, followed suit. After independence, states continued passing laws restricting the entry of people likely to end up on the dole. In fact, New York had a law predating the Immigration Act of 1882 by two years that it used to deport immigrants dependent on public assistance.
The people who settled and founded this country understood that immigrants who arrived already asking for public money would not likely contribute to the emerging American society. The settling and taming of the American continent demanded self-sufficiency, and self-sufficiency represented an important source of liberty for our nation’s founders. Only self-sufficient people, whether Southern yeomen farmers or Northern independent craftsmen, could practice real self-government and resist the threat of an overbearing government.
And the founders’ descendants understood this truth as well, given the passage of state laws and the Immigration Act of 1882 to that effect. Even national Democrats understood it for a long time. Consider this: Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency nearly two dozen times since the passage of the law, including during the presidencies of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Yet none of them have moved to repeal or replace the public charge provision of the 1882 law.
Instead, they’ve simply stopped enforcing the law as it is written. After all, it’s far easier to just ignore a rule rather than to make the case to the American people about why a very common sense notion that has been widely understood as a necessity in America for centuries should be repealed because it’s mean, or something.
But leftists don’t care about established law or even the spirit behind it. They care about maintaining the patronage system that keeps them in power. They make sure their constituents have ready access to public benefits in exchange for political support. This tactic is almost as old as the Democrat Party itself, first pioneered by Tammany Hall, the Democrat political machine that dominated New York City for decades in the 19th century. Tammany parlayed government contracts and benefits into votes from the city’s exploding immigrant community, notably the Irish who began to come to the city in droves during the 1850s.
Now, in the modern day, Democrats run the same playbook, and they’re just as shameless about it. Mamdani’s speech practically admits that leftists bring in immigrants to get them on the welfare “they need.” But it’s one big scam, one big pay-to-play effort that American taxpayers foot the bill for. “Immigrants are New Yorkers.” That’s certainly true for Mamdani and his cronies. Immigrants propelled Mamdani into power because he promised them more free stuff, and now he has to deliver.
Rather than an evil crime to take away these benefits from immigrants, it’s an outrage that we haven’t been enforcing the public charge rule all these years. Consider all the federal dollars that could have been saved from rampant welfare fraud and general welfare dependence if our leaders actually enforced the laws that we passed and have not repealed.
The history of U.S. immigration law shows that public charge restrictions are the DEFAULT designed to prevent societal leeches from entering the country, not a cruel anomaly used to harass innocent migrants just trying to make their way. The public charge rule was totally uncontroversial until the Democrats decided they needed to import the whole world to win elections and amass political power.
