The Trump Administration Revived and Sharply Expanded the 1882 "Public Charge" Rule — a Wealth Test With Documented Eugenicist Roots — Letting DHS Deny Green Cards to Lawful Immigrants on a Guess That They Might Someday Use Public Benefits, and Now Counting Even the Medicaid and Food Aid Their U.S.-Citizen Children Receive; by the Government's Own Estimate, 1.3 Million People Will Drop Off Health Care, Food, and Housing Assistance Out of Fear
On September 18, 2026, a sweeping expansion of the "public charge" rule took effect, giving USCIS and DHS officers broad new power to deny green cards and visas to lawful immigrants if they predict the applicant might someday become reliant on public benefits. The rule lets officers weigh a wide range of means-tested benefits that mostly could not be counted before — Medicaid, SNAP (food stamps), CHIP, housing vouchers, TANF, SSI, WIC — and, critically, benefits applied for on behalf of family members, including the applicant's U.S.-citizen children. About 580,000 green card applicants a year are subject to these reviews. The point is not only the denials but the deterrence: the government's own estimate is that roughly 1.3 million people will disenroll from or forgo Medicaid, food aid, children's health insurance, and housing assistance out of fear that using benefits they are legally entitled to will cost a parent a green card. The "public charge" test dates to 1882, and its scholarly history is not flattering: as UCLA historian Kelly Lytle Hernández, author of "Racist by Design," puts it, it has long been "a tool of eugenicists and white nationalists across time who have tried to filter who is allowed to enter the country." Trump imposed a similar version in his first term; it was litigated and rescinded under Biden. This one is broader, and more than a dozen states have already sued to stop it.