Public Charge Rule Is Immigrant 'Wealth Test,' NYC Lawsuit Says

NEW YORK — A Trump administration rule penalizing immigrants for using public benefits imposes a "wealth test" on a major path to citizenship, New York City immigrant-rights groups say in a new lawsuit.

The complaint brought Tuesday by five community and advocacy organizations was the sixth legal challenge to the so-called public charge rule requiring immigrants seeking green cards or visas to show they are not likely to rely on certain government programs such as food stamps.

The Department of Homeland Security's rule would essentially restrict permanent U.S. residency to people with the financial resources to handle health problems or loss of wages, argues the lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court.

The measure set to take effect Oct. 15 is also motivated by "unconstitutional animus against nonwhite immigrants," as it would disproportionately affect people from places such as Mexico, Central America, Africa, the Caribbean, China and the Philippines, the complaint says.

The plaintiffs — Make the Road New York, the African Services Committee, the Asian American Federation, Catholic Charities Community Services and Catholic Legal Immigration Network — want a judge to nullify the rule and declare it unconstitutional.

"We won't stand idly by as this administration tries to turn our family-based immigration system into a cruel, racist wealth-based system," Javier H. Valdes, Make the Road New York's executive director, said in a statement.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

The lawsuit came a week after New York City and the states of New York, Connecticut and Vermont filed their own complaint against the public charge rule.

The community organizations' suit echoes concerns from city officials that the rule has and will continue to discourage immigrants from accessing public benefits that they may need to survive.

The measure circumvents Congress by redefining the term "public charge" — a person who relies on public funds to get by — in a way that lawmakers have rejected, the complaint says.

Make the Road New York member Blanca Palomeque, an ovarian cancer survivor, said she would have had to choose between health care and staying with her family if the rule had taken effect when she was applying for her green card 11 years ago.

"This inhumane change punishes working class families like mine for feeding our children, accessing crucial healthcare services and keeping our families together — all because we’re not white and wealthy," Palomeque said in a statement.

The lawsuit also cites President Donald Trump's previous anti-immigrant comments and an attempt by Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, to rewrite the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.

"The Rule — which originated in a nativist think tank, and subsequently in a draft Executive Order — reflects the President’s and his advisors’ longstanding hostility to nonwhite immigrants from what he has referred to as 's---hole countries,' and whom he has characterized as 'animals' who are 'infesting' the United States," the complaint reads.

The Trump administration has said that the rule is consistent with the federal government's intent for immigrants to be self-sufficient. The government has long restricted immigration by people who are likely to need public money to support themselves, Cuccinelli has said.

"This is a privilege we’ve offered to people all around the world for the entire duration of our history, but that privilege starts with certain expectations, and for the last 140 years, among those expectations is that the people who will come here will not become a burden on the taxpayers and the government," Cuccinelli said in a radio interview two weeks ago.