We are down to the final days of the public comment period for the Department of Homeland Security’s public charge ANPRM, and we need you! There is still time to join the over 400 organizations who have already signed on, so sign onto the comment by our NEW deadline of EOD this Thursday, October 21st, and make sure your voice is heard throughout the rulemaking process. We encourage organizations from Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming to join us and sign on! 

To those of you who have already signed your organization, we want to say thank you. It is our collective voice and power that drives this coalition forward, and we are so grateful for your contributions! If you are already signed on, we also ask that you share this sign-on comment with your organizational networks -- particularly if you have contacts with groups in the states listed above. To help you with any additional outreach, here is a sample message that you can adapt and share with your organizational networks that explains the comment strategy and asks them to take action. 

Please join the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), California Primary Care Association (CPCA), and Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations (AAPCHO) in signing onto their Health Center comment letter in response to the Biden Administration's advance notice of proposed rulemaking on the public charge ground for inadmissibility. The letter urges the Biden Administration to conduct education and outreach efforts to address the chilling effect, to not consider Medicaid in a public charge determination, and to include guardrails to prevent a public charge determination from being used as a tool to discriminate. Additionally, the letter discusses the negative impact that the vacated 2019 public charge rule had on health center operations, finances, and patients. Deadline to sign on is Friday, October 22 at 3pm ET/ 12pm PT.

To review the sign on letter, please click HERE.
To sign onto the letter, please click HERE.

PIF's State Policy Subcommittee has developed a comprehensive new resource for public officials to support immigrant access to health, nutrition, and housing programs and reduce the chilling effect of the public charge rule. The Toolkit for State and Local Government Officials presents 6 core recommendations and provides examples from across the country of positive practices to support access to public benefits, as well as templates of training for front-line enrollment staff and sample documents for adaptation. Advocates can use this tool to urge their state and local government partners to adopt best practices and advance immigrant access to benefits. Accompanying this toolkit is a resource specifically for elected officials, with easy to accomplish actions elected officials can take to mitigate the chilling effect of the 2019 public charge rule, with sample communications tools for elected officials to better inform their immigrant constituents about public charge and public benefits. A special thank you to Alicia Wilson at PIF and Andrea Kovach of the Shriver Center on Poverty Law for spearheading this toolkit, as well as to Tanya Broder at NILC, Elizabeth Lower-Basch at CLASP, and additional State Policy Subcommittee members for contributing to the toolkit.