Immigration Officials Allowed to Consider Use of Benefits When Granting Permanent Legal Status
Brett T. | 10:00 PM on July 18, 2026
Here's some news from earlier in the week, and it's a CBS News exclusive. CBS News reported that the Trump administration was allowing immigration officers, when deciding whether applicants qualified for permanent legal status, to consider whether they had used taxpayer-funded benefits, including Medicaid, SNAP, and housing benefits. In short:
Nicole Sganga reports:
The Department of Homeland Security is poised to rescind a 2022 Biden-era regulation narrowing how officers apply a long-standing "public charge" test — an immigration screening tool used to determine whether applicants are likely to rely on government support — according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials.
The change may directly affect hundreds of thousands of people applying for green cards from inside the U.S. each year. It could trigger a broader ripple effect if immigrant families avoid health care, food, or housing assistance — even when they or their U.S.-citizen children legally qualify — out of fear that tapping into those benefits could ultimately hurt their immigration cases.
https://twitchy.com/brettt/2026/07/18/immigration-officials-allowed-to-consider-use-of-benefits-when-granting-permanent-legal-status-n2430307#google_vignette
