DHS Restores Public-Benefit Test for 588,000 Green Card Cases, Weighing Medicaid and SNAP
Updated
Updated · CBS New York · Jul 16
DHS Restores Public-Benefit Test for 588,000 Green Card Cases, Weighing Medicaid and SNAP
3 articles · Updated · CBS New York · Jul 16
Summary
Hundreds of thousands of green-card applicants each year will again face review of Medicaid, food-stamp and housing-aid use after DHS moved to scrap a 2022 Biden rule that had largely limited the test to cash welfare and long-term institutional care.
USCIS said the revived public-charge framework will take effect next week but will not be applied for 60 days, pushing actual use into September while the agency updates Form I-485, guidance and internal procedures.
DHS estimated about 588,000 adjustment-of-status applicants a year would be subject to the review, while roughly 950,000 people in immigrant households could drop or avoid benefits because of a chilling effect.
The rule keeps long-standing exemptions for refugees, asylees and certain humanitarian categories, though officers may still weigh household finances when family members receive benefits that help support an applicant.
The shift revives broader discretion first used under Trump's 2019 rule, even though formal public-charge denials were rare from 2020 to 2024, suggesting the policy's wider impact may come more from deterrence than actual rejections.