Friday, August 21, 2009

Fishy Claims on Immigration and Health Care   [Mark Krikorian]

Supporters of Obamacare continue to deny the undeniable — that illegal aliens will indeed receive taxpayer-funded subsidies under the existing drafts. Just yesterday, on Smerconish's show, the president said:

This has been an example of just pure misinformation out there. None of the bills that have been voted on in Congress, and none of the proposals coming out of the White House propose giving coverage to illegal immigrants — none of them. That has never been on the table; nobody has discussed it. So everybody who is listening out there, when you start hearing that somehow this is all designed to provide health insurance to illegal immigrants, that is simply not true and has never been the case."

Well, that's not quite a lie because our silver-tongued attorney-in-chief is right that the bills are not "designed to provide health insurance to illegal immigrants," but they will do so nonetheless. As Jim Edwards and Jon Feere demonstrate in some detail, the supposed bar on illegal aliens getting subsidies is inadequate: The bar applies only to one section of the bill; there's no requirement that applicants' eligibility be verified, as is the case with other welfare programs; and the Democrats specifically rejected amendments to require verification.

At the CIS panel discussion Wednesday on the subject, Robert Rector of Heritage described the decision not to check the legal status of subsidy applicants as "such an unprecedented step within the U.S. welfare system, to basically say, oh, you are not eligible but we will not check, wink, wink, nod, nod." Rector was also clear he thought the Democrats in Congress knew perfectly well what they were doing and intended "to allow all welfare benefits to be fully available to all illegal immigrants."

But I'm guessing the White House is so desperate to get anything passed with the words "health care" in the title, that they'll eventually agree to add verification of illegal aliens, just as they're hinting at dropping the public option. And they're already preparing for that, because they're telling the pro-illegal immigration crowd that it won't matter anyway, because all the illegal aliens will be legalized soon, rendering verification a moot point. As my colleague Jerry Kammer wrote:

In an interview on the program "Al Punto," White House Director of Hispanic Media Luis Miranda acknowledged that coverage would not be provided to illegals. Then he immediately added, "Precisely because of that we are working for reform of immigration laws." Presto-change-o, problem solved, with coverage for all those formerly illegal immigrants.

08/21 01:17 PMShare