Government Appeals Covid Welfare for Aliens

 

IRLI urges appellate court to vacate injunction of public charge rule

 

WASHINGTON—Yesterday, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals urging the court to vacate a lower-court injunction of the Trump administration’s Public Charge Rule. The rule denies green cards to aliens likely to become dependent on public assistance.

 

Earlier in the case, the Supreme Court had stayed, or suspended, an injunction against the Public Charge Rule issued by a Manhattan federal district court, allowing the rule to remain in effect on appeal. Then the plaintiffs petitioned the Supreme Court to get that stay lifted, on the ground that coronavirus outbreaks changed the relevant circumstances.

 

IRLI had filed a brief in each of these proceedings before the Court. 

After the Court rejected their petition, the plaintiffs went back down to the district court and filed a motion for a new preliminary injunction, which was granted. Following IRLI’s friend-of-the-court brief urging the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to stay that injunction, the court did so.

 

IRLI’s present brief is in support of the government’s appeal, on the merits, of that injunction. In its brief, IRLI shows that the plaintiffs lack standing because they did not exhaust their administrative remedies, and also that the aliens the plaintiffs purport to assist will be denied green cards if they receive public assistance now and the Supreme Court later upholds the Public Charge Rule on appeal.

 

“From colonial times onwards, America has insisted that settlers and immigrants be self-sufficient, not taxpayer-dependent,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “This rule has served our nation well, but in recent decades it hasn’t been enforced, to the point where immigrant households are now more dependent on public assistance than native households. We applaud the administration for returning us to a time-tested policy that requires hardy self-reliance in our immigrants, and believe that policy eventually will be upheld by the Supreme Court.”

 

The case is State of New York v. DHS, No. 20-2537 (Second Circuit).

  

For additional information, contact: Brian Lonergan • 202-232-5590 • [email protected]