On January 5, 2022, Texas Attorney General Ken filed a lawsuit to prevent the Biden regime from ignoring a federal immigration law that bars illegal aliens from residing in the United States if they’re likely to depend on taxpayer-funded programs.
“I’ve sued [President Joe] Biden over a dozen times to secure our southern border,” Paxton declared on Twitter. “Now, just as 2023 is starting, I’m bringing another lawsuit—the first of its kind in the nation on Biden’s disastrous new public-charge rule. I’ll keep suing [and] winning until he [and] his lawless Dems follow the law.”
Paxton launched accusations against the Biden regime of exacerbating the country’s current border crisis by undermining a welfare rule that “effectively nullifies federal law excluding aliens likely to become public charges,” per a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas (pdf).
Caden Pearson of the Epoch Times observed that the public charge rule has been in effect since 1882 and was reasserted by the US Congress in 1996 through the passage of the bipartisan Welfare Reform Act. By not enforcing the law, the Biden regime has increased the incentive for illegal aliens dependent on welfare to migrate to the US, the lawsuit argues.
In the lawsuit, Paxton claims that the Biden regime rule enacted in December 2022 was enacted in violation of federal law and is arbitrary and capricious in nature.
“The Biden Administration is committed to opening the borders to aliens who lack the ability to take care of themselves. Texans should not have to pay for these costly immigrants, nor should any other American,” Paxton declared in a statement. “I will continue to defend the rule of law and fight to ensure that the massive costs of illegal immigration don’t further burden taxpayers.”
Paxton’s office claims the new rule that the Biden regime enacted banned the consideration of legally required factors used to determine whether an alien is likely to become a “public charge.” The “public charge” term made its first statutory appearance in the Immigration Act of 1882. In this law, Congress banned the admission of “any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.”
Migrants being economically self-sufficient has been a cornerstone of US immigration law since the first laws were codified in the early days of the American Republic. Immigrants who struggled to make ends meet generally relied on improving their skills or turned to their families, private organizations, and sponsors to stay afloat. If they ended up on the public dole, they would be expelled from the country.
Generally speaking, migrants would provide an assurance that they wouldn’t become a burden for American taxpayers by indicating that their family would financially support them during hard times. That said, Paxton argues that the Biden rule prevents a comprehensive investigation of this criteria, per Paxton’s office.
Furthermore, Paxton is spearheading a coalition made up of 14 states that filed a cert-state brief in the US Supreme Court in September 2022 following the Biden regime’s attempt to scrap the public charge in an underhanded manner.
“With America in the midst of a recession and families across the country already facing record-high inflation, it’s completely reprehensible to expect taxpayers to foot the bill for hundreds of millions of dollars to sponsor more and more illegal aliens,” Paxton declared at the time the cert-state brief was filed.
Paxton is taking a commonsense approach by opposing the Biden regime’s pro-welfare policy that only serves as a magnet for increased Third World mass migration. The destruction of the public charge rule is all about sticking it to Middle Americans, who will likely be coughing up large amounts in taxes to subsidize alien invaders.
By making the US’s welfare magnet even more appealing, the Great Replacement of the Historic American Nation will only accelerate.
The dismantling of the welfare state and the shutdown of immigration — legal and illegal — are essential steps to restoring America’s greatness and protecting the country’s demographic integrity.