The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is seeking to change a rule that determines eligibility for permanent residency—commonly known as a green card—based on whether an applicant is considered a “public charge,” someone who is likely to depend primarily on public benefits.

That rule—known as the public charge ground of inadmissibility—generally applies to green card applicants, with the exception of certain categories such as refugees and asylum seekers.

The proposed policy change would allow immigration officials to take into account the use of a wider range of public benefits—including food stamps, Medicaid, and housing assistance—to determine whether a green card applicant will become a public charge.

Critics have said that the proposed policy change will lead to confusion and “decreased participation in public benefit programs” by people who need them.

Once this review is complete, which could take months, the government may modify the rule based on the feedback received before a final rule is published and officially takes effect.

The only benefits officers could take into account were cash benefit programs that provide direct, monthly payments intended to cover basic needs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Security Income, as well as long-term care in a facility such as a nursing home, when the government pays for it.

Under the new proposal, officers would also be empowered to consider all individualized, case-specific facts and any data relevant to a person’s self-sufficiency.

The changes will restore a process that “trusts in and relies on DHS officers’ good judgment and sound discretion as envisioned by Congress,” the proposal says.

The new DHS proposal also clarifies that receiving “any means‑tested public benefit” is considered a breach of the public charge bond—a monetary guarantee, made by a citizen or U.S. company, that a green card applicant will not become a public charge.

Under the new proposal, an affidavit of support also carries less weight.

Currently, officers must “favorably consider” any eligible affidavit of support—an agreement in which a U.S. citizen, a green card holder, or a company pledges to provide financial backing to the applicant, if needed.

The new rule would also eliminate protection for immigrants who used benefits while they were in certain exempt categories.

For some of those categories, there is a path to citizenship that is also exempt from the public charge rule. For others, there is not—including those with temporary protected status, which is a temporary stay of deportation provided to nationals of certain countries that are undergoing armed conflict, disaster, or other extraordinary conditions.

Under the 2022 rule, people with temporary protected status were shielded from having their use of public benefits weighed against them, even if they later moved into a nonprotected status. The new proposal would allow DHS to consider an applicant’s use of public benefits regardless of when those benefits were received.

Under current rules, an applicant is mostly evaluated individually, whereas the new rule takes into account an applicant’s family members living in the same household, including mixed-status households, which consist of people with different immigration and citizenship statuses.

However, public benefit use can’t be considered against immigrants in mixed-status households who entered the United States as refugees or asylum seekers. Between 1990 and 2022, the United States welcomed more than 2.1 million refugees and accepted more than 800,000 asylees, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

DHS said the new rule could affect some U.S. citizens who live in mixed-status households. It could penalize green card applicants if direct family members in their households, including U.S. citizens, receive public benefits. Those U.S. citizens may decide to avoid public benefits so the green card applicant isn’t penalized.

DHS estimated that about 950,000 individuals will likely stop participating in or choose not to apply for public benefit programs if the current proposal is implemented.

Studies found that after the 1996 welfare reform law, decreases in benefit enrollment ranged from 21 percent to 54 percent, DHS noted.

For more than a century, immigration officers were given broad discretion, known as the “totality of the circumstances” framework.

Then, in 1996, Congress set new requirements and policy goals. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 required officers to consider, “at a minimum,” five statutory factors: age, health, family status, financial situation, and education and skills.

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In response to the 1996 laws, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (since split into several agencies within the DHS) issued guidance narrowing the “public charge” definition. The goal was to prevent immigrants from refusing necessary health services over concerns that their visa applications would be rejected.

The 1999 Interim Field Guidance defined a “public charge” as one “primarily dependent on the government for subsistence,” demonstrated by the receipt of “public cash assistance for income maintenance” or “institutionalization for long-term care at government expense.”

This guidance explicitly stated that non-cash benefits, such as food stamps and general medical care, and supplemental cash benefits should not be considered.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services—the DHS agency that issues visas and green cards—followed the 1999 Interim Field Guidance for two decades.

In 2019, the Trump administration redefined a “public charge” as an alien who received one or more public benefits for more than 12 months total within any 36-month period.

The 2019 final rule expanded “public benefit” to include SNAP, most forms of Medicaid, and certain forms of subsidized housing, alongside cash assistance.

The expanded rule was subject to extensive litigation. In January 2020, the Supreme Court allowed it to go into effect. But the Biden administration stopped enforcing it in March 2021.

And in December 2022, the Biden administration implemented a new public charge rule, which re-applied the narrower definitions from the 1999 Interim Field Guidance.

The Biden policy left “little opportunity for discretion or deviation,” the recent DHS proposal states.

“The administration and clear congressional national policy on welfare and immigration point to the view that an alien who lacks self-sufficiency should not be admitted to the United States or be granted adjustment of status to that of a lawful permanent resident,” DHS stated.

One in 10 adult immigrants said they had stopped participating in or didn’t apply for a public assistance program in the previous 12 months because they didn’t want to draw attention to their or a family member’s immigration status, according to KFF. Chilling effects are higher—42 percent—in households with likely illegal immigrant members, KFF said.

Both legal and illegal immigrants “make very extensive use of the welfare system as well,” said Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies.

“And that raises the ... question, why have a legal immigration system that admits so many people who can’t take care of themselves?” he told The Epoch Times in a previous interview.

“That’s not being caused by people cheating,” Camarota said. “That’s not being caused by people not working—most of them work—but they’re just poor. If you had to put it on a bumper sticker, it would be that there’s a high cost to cheap labor.”

“We should be careful about who we let in,” he said. “Once here, it’s going to be very hard to stop people from getting benefits, so the goal should always be keeping out those who are going to need benefits.”