Excluding Non-Citizens from the Social Safety Net

Abstract

This paper, based on a talk I gave at the University of Georgia’s conference on the Future of Global Healthcare Governance, examines the mechanisms through which the exclusion of noncitizen immigrants from the social safety net undermine public health, especially, but not only during the pandemic. The paper reviews the pandemic’s disparate on immigrants, and discusses how several different laws and policies, including the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the Affordable Care Act, and the Trump Administration’s public charge rule, have erected barriers to noncitizens’ access to health care and other critical components of the social safety net. The article concludes by discussing steps that the Biden Administration and Congress should take to reduce these barriers and improve public health.

Keywords: non-citizen, noncitizen, healthcare, social safety net, Affordable Care Act, public health, immigrant, immigration, pandemic, COVID,