By Richard Hernandez
More than 200,000 so-called limbo immigrants – ones who are technically in the United States illegally as the foreign-born children of parents who entered the United States illegally but have in some fashion registered as being present in the United States and California specifically – are now eligible to buy California taxpayer-subsidized health insurance available through the Affordable Care Act.
This generosity to non-citizens while American citizens, most particularly males between the ages of 18 and 62, are left to fend for themselves is a matter of some controversy. There is a legitimate philosophical difference between people with regard to whether certain American citizens/taxpayers should be excluded from the benefits provided to those who are neither American citizens nor taxpayers, particularly when those benefits are being paid for by American taxpayers.
Furthermore, there are divided opinions among legal authorities, including American courts of law, as to whether providing benefits to non-citizens that are not available to American citizens is both legal and constitutional.
At the center of this difficult circumstance are the “Dreamers;” the Dream Act, which existed in a legislative bill form but which was never officially passed into law; and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, the legality of which has not been fully established.
Dreamers are the young foreign-born children of immigrants who came into the United States illegally, i.e., in defiance of U.S. Immigration Law and were or are essentially officially undocumented, but who, for the most part, are being educated in public schools. They are said to have the “dream” of obtaining legalized status and being allowed to remain in the United States, which in virtually all cases is the country that they in their life experience are most familiar with. The vast majority of Dreamers are from Mexico.
The Dream Act bill laid out and would have provided if passed, a pathway to permanent residency for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States by their parents if those young people met certain qualifications, such as not having been convicted of a felony or what was deemed “a serious misdemeanor.” The bill passed in the U.S. House of Representatives but did not gain passage in the U.S. Senate when it was kept from consideration by a bipartisan filibuster.
In 2012, then-president Barack Obama sought to effectively reproduce what was contained in the Dream Act by means of an edict or executive branch memorandum which established the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy. President Obama, while stating “This is not amnesty [and] This is not immunity [and] This is not a path to citizenship,” said that DACA would place a “low priority” on the enforcement of immigration law with regards to the roughly 65,000 young immigrants on average per year brought into the United States unlawfully by their parents, as long as they do not break the law. The policy provides them with the hope or potential of achieving legal residency status. It also makes them eligible for certain social service programs traditionally available to some American citizens.
The Affordable Care Act, informally known as Obamacare, was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in march 2010. Through various means this cut in half the number of Americans who did not have health coverage/medical insurance. Those means included the expansion of the federal government’s Medicaid and Medicate program eligibility criteria, mandates on health insurance providers which prevented them from rejecting individuals with pre-existing medical conditions, by imposing requirements that companies with more than a specified number of employees provide them with some form of medical coverage and by requiring individuals who did not, or whose families did not, have medical insurance to purchase the same or be assessed a financial penalty. The Affordable Care Act prompted certain reforms or changes in the public medical service assistance provided by many states, such as MediCal in California, which has existed since 1965. In reaction to the Affordable Care Act, California created Covered California, a system intended to provide affordable health care to the state’s residents who were not already receiving Medi-Cal assistance, had purchased for themselves and their families medical insurance or already had health insurance purchased for them and their families through their employers.
This year, as a result of a combination of action by the State of California and the Joseph Biden Administration, DACA residents were redefined from being individuals who are present in the country illegally but not subject to immigration enforcement to foreigners who ar “lawfully present” in the United States, thus making them eligible to purchase subsidized health plans through Covered California. That subsidization is provided by California’s taxpayers.
While in some cases, those with DACA status have medical insurance if their parents are able to afford it or if one or both parents are employed by a company that offers it employees health coverage, up until now many California DACA residents did not have it.
It is anticipated the change will provide health care for many Dreamers who up until now did not have any regular or steady access to doctors or medical professionals.
While many see this as a positive development, there are others who find it troubling that the government, in the case locally of the California government, extending a helping hand to non-citizens when American citizens in California are not eligible for medical assistance through the state or federal government.
For over a decade, non-U.S. citizens residing in California meeting low-income criteria become eligible for Medi-Cal upon eclipsing their 65th birthday.
While California for decades in practice provided all pregnant women with medical assistance at virtually no charge, in 2014 officially made such care legally available.
Prior to 2016, undocumented immigrants in California below the age of 65 were not qualified to receive comprehensive state-sponsored or taxpayer-defrayed health insurance beyond what was provided in hospital emergency rooms, which by law could not turn away the grievously injured. That year, the California legislature to voted to extend Medi-Cal benefits to illegal aliens, those being children without legal residency status, as the consequence of a bill authored by then-Assemblyman Ricardo Lara and signed into law by then-Governor Jerry Brown. In 2019, Senate Bill 104, by which full-scope Medi-Cal access was extended to cover low-income illegal aliens aged 19 to 25, passed into law and was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom, going into effect on January 1, 2020.
Legislation introduced by California Senator Maria Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula (D-Fresno) in 2020 placed $1.3 billion into California’s 2021-2022 budget to provide Medi-Cal overage to illegal aliens over the age of 50. Thus, illegal aliens become eligible for California’s health care benefit at an age 15 years below that of U.S. citizens.
Governor Newsom signed the 2022-23 $307.9 billion operating budget on June 30, 2022, calling the expansion “a transformative step towards strengthening the healthcare system for all Californians.” That generosity made available coverage for an additional 764,000 illegal and unregistered immigrants in California willing to come forward and claim it, costing California and by extension U.S. taxpayers roughly $2.7 billion per year.
On January 1, 2024, the State of California on Monday expanded health insurance to about 700,000 illegal aliens between the ages 26 and 49.
At the same time, of California’s 39,129,000 residents, it is estimated that some 11 percent, or 4,304,190 are without medical coverage of any kind. The lion’s share of those without health insurance in the Golden State are U.S. Citizens. There is a groundswell of people who believe unfair, unjust, unpatriotic, unconstitutional and illegal for foreigners who are not American citizens and do not participate in American society to the fullest by bearing the full range of the average citizen’s tax burden to be receiving benefits from the government that many citizens, including veterans, do not receive.
Among those feeling that way is the president-elect, Donald Trump. In order for those defined as DACA residents to continue to be eligible for California taxpayer-subsidized health insurance available through the Affordable Care Act by means of Covered California in the coming year, President Trump will need to renew the Biden Administration policy that is allowing DACA residents – limbo immigrants – to take advantage of the Affordable Care Act provisions which is now allowing them to purchase taxpayer-subsidized discounted medical service.
President Trump during his first term sought, but failed, to cancel the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy. He is likely to make that effort again, this time under circumstances where he has more leverage than he did seven years ago. And there are lawsuits under way which challenge the constitutionality of DACA. In one of those cases, a U.S. District Court held DACA to be illegal.