A federal judge in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday put on hold a rule by US President Donald Trump’s administration requiring immigrants prove they will have health insurance or can pay for medical care before they can get visas.
US District Judge Michael Simon granted a temporary restraining order that prevented the rule from going into effect yesterday.
It is not clear when he will rule on the merits of the case.
Seven US citizens and a nonprofit organization on Wednesday filed the federal lawsuit, contending the rule would block nearly two-thirds of all prospective legal immigrants.
The lawsuit also said the rule would greatly reduce or eliminate the number of immigrants who enter the US on family-sponsored visas.
“We’re very grateful that the court recognized the need to block the health care ban immediately,” said Justice Action Center senior litigator Esther Sung, who argued at Saturday’s hearing on behalf of the plaintiffs.
“The ban would separate families and cut two-thirds of green-card-based immigration starting tonight, were the ban not stopped,” she said.
The proclamation signed by Trump early last month applies to people seeking immigrant visas from abroad, not those in the US already. It does not affect lawful permanent residents and does not apply to asylum-seekers, refugees or children.
The proclamation states that immigrants would be barred from entering the country unless they are to be covered by health insurance within 30 days of entering or have enough financial resources to pay for any medical costs.
The rule is the Trump administration’s latest effort to limit immigrant access to public programs while trying to move the country away from a family-based immigration system to a merit-based system.
The White House said in a statement at the time the proclamation was issued that too many non-citizens were taking advantage of the country’s “generous public health programs” and that immigrants contribute to the problem of “uncompensated health care costs.”
Under the government’s visa rule, the required insurance can be bought individually or provided by an employer and it can be short-term coverage or catastrophic.
Medicaid does not count, and an immigrant cannot get a visa if using the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies when buying insurance. The federal government pays for those subsidies.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan immigration think tank, 57 percent of US immigrants had private health insurance in 2017, compared with 69 percent of US-born, and 30 percent had public health insurance coverage, compared with 36 percent of native born.
The uninsured rate for immigrants dropped from 32 percent to 20 percent from 2013 to 2017, since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, according to the institute.
There are about 1.1 million people who obtain green cards each year.
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