Over one million individuals obtain lawful permanent resident (LPR) status each year (DHS 2020). Beginning February of 2020, LPR applicants became subject to new public charge rules that seek to bar admission to anyone who “is likely at any time to become a public charge.” Motivated by the misconception that immigrants overuse U.S. welfare benefits, the rules seek to employ unnecessary vetting criteria that are both unfair and unsafe.
In February 2020, the U.S. government began to implement a new Public Charge rule that greatly expands the definition of "public charge" when determining admissibility for legal permanent residency (LPR). The rule seeks to determine not only whether applicants used public benefits in the past, but also whether they are likely to use them in the future. However, predicting future use based on characteristics measured at the time of application, such as English language proficiency and income, is difficult. We evaluate the risk of being deemed inadmissible as well as the likelihood of using public assistance by regional group. Using a sample of recently arrived LPRs in the 2013-2017 American Community Survey, we find that Mexicans/Central Americans face disproportionate risk of being deemed a public charge despite their relatively low public assistance use. This increased risk would likely alter the composition of newly admitted LPRs with relatively fewer Mexican/ Central American LPRs.
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are frequently an immigrant’s primary contact for support and service provision following deportation. We used semi-structured interviews and survey data collected in 2016 from the directors of 15 migrant-serving ONG in Tijuana, Mexico, to study how these Organizations support deportees. Building on the interdisciplinary nonprofit literature, we apply theories related to public values to frame our analysis. Our results suggest that NGOs in Tijuana contribute to public value across six roles while supporting deportees. As a pilot project, this paper provides a foundation for future studies of NGOs and the dynamics of U.S.-Mexico border cities receiving deportees.
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