Opinion ID: 4553022
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Current Public Charge Ground

Text: It was against this backdrop of judicial and administrative interpretations that Congress enacted PRWORA and IIRIRA in 1996, creating the public charge ground as it exists today. While leaving the principal statutory language intact – rendering inadmissible any non-citizen who is “likely at any time to become a public charge” – IIRIRA amended the ground to require consideration of the non25 See, e.g., Matter of A-, 19 I. & N. Dec. 867, 870 (B.I.A. 1988) (“There may be circumstances beyond the control of the alien which temporarily prevent an alien from joining the work force. . . . [T]he director placed undue weight on [the family’s financial circumstances], thereby overshadowing the more important factors; namely, that the applicant has now joined the work force, that she is young, and that she has no physical or mental defects which might affect her earning capacity.”); Vindman, 16 I. & N. Dec. at 132 (affirming public charge finding where respondents were older adults and had no employment prospects); cf. Matter of Kowalski, 10 I. & N. Dec. 159, 160 (B.I.A. 1963). 54 citizen’s age, health, family status, financial status, and education. See IIRIRA § 531(a). IIRIRA also required certain non-citizens to obtain affidavits of support, id. § 551(a), building on PRWORA’s requirement that such affidavits of support be legally enforceable against the sponsor, see PRWORA § 423. Congress considered, and nearly enacted, a more sweeping set of changes to the public charge ground with IIRIRA. The conference report of the bill included a statutory definition of public charge, which would have defined the term to cover “any alien who receives [means-tested public benefits] for an aggregate period of at least 12 months[.]” CONFERENCE REPORT, H.R. REP. 104-828, at 138 (1996). While the House passed the conference report containing this language, it was ultimately dropped under threat of presidential veto. See 142 CONG. REC. S11,882 (daily ed. Sept. 30, 1996) (statement of Sen. Kyl); cf. Statement on Senate Action on the “Immigration Control and Financial Responsibility Act of 1996,” 32 WEEKLY COMP. PRES. DOC. 783 (May 2, 1996) (President Clinton critiquing prior version of the bill for “go[ing] too far in denying legal immigrants access to vital safety net programs which could jeopardize public health and safety”). 55 We end our historical review back where we started this opinion, with INS’s release of the 1999 Guidance to counteract public confusion after IIRIRA and PRWORA. We have already explored in some detail INS’s 1999 interpretation, which defines “public charge” as one who is “primarily dependent on the Government for subsistence, as demonstrated by either the receipt of public cash assistance for income maintenance or institutionalization for long-term care at Government expense.” 64 Fed. Reg. at 28,677. We simply note here that INS concluded that its interpretation was warranted by “the plain meaning of the word ‘charge,’ the historical context of public dependency when the public charge immigration provisions were first enacted more than a century ago, . . . the expertise of the benefit-granting agencies that deal with subsistence issues[, and the] factual situations presented in the public charge case law.” Id.