Health Care for Child Immigrants is Safe For Now, Experts Say
Program Date: Jan. 24, 2023

In December 2022, the Biden administration released its final version of the “public charge rule” for green card and visa applicants, an attempt to reverse the Trump-era policy that tried to limit immigration benefits for those seeking government aid.

The new Biden policy ensures that individuals will not be penalized for choosing to access the health benefits and other supplemental government services available to them.  But the problem isn’t necessarily solved by a revised rule.

“This continues to be a huge issue because of course in our communities, they don’t necessarily know that these changes have happened or understand these changes,” said Cindy Ji of the Children’s Defense Fund – Texas. Here’s what journalists should know and convey in their coverage, according to Ji and her CDF colleague Michelle Castillo. [Transcript | Video]

4 takeaways:

Over 248,00 children were disenrolled from Medicaid by their parents between 2017 and 2020. The reason? Castillo said that anti-immigrant rhetoric played a role. “It’s hard to say with a hundred percent certainty that this was all due to the public charge, but our organization put out a report on the public charge where we had conversations with a lot of families on the ground,” she said. What they found was “…How much of a chilling effect the fear and the anti-immigrant rhetoric had on the decisions to disenroll their children from Medicaid,” Castillo said. The Children’s Defense Fund has been working with other organizations to lead on-the-ground education in communities to help get them connected to health care coverage or any other resources needed.

The media should help dispel myths, Ji said. Even though immigrant families might not be reading every article about public charges, they are still hearing about it, she said. “When we are reaching out and trying to get coverage on this issue, the first thing that we prioritize are the key messages that families need to know.” These key messages – which she suggested go in bullet points at the top – are that it’s safe to get benefits and that it’s safe to enroll family members, too. “Having that key, that family-facing takeaway is huge, and we try to uplift it wherever we can,” Ji said. Reporters can also help make sure that families know that they have the agency to stay on top of their cases and to check their mail for renewal notices.

Context is key. “A lot of this coverage can be very wonky. It can be very legal,” Ji said. “As some of you may know, our attorney general Ken Paxton is leading a lawsuit with 14 other states to challenge the newest public charge rule.” This can be scary for families to hear, so she encourages reporters to provide context about what the lawsuit means. “We know that in the meantime, the Biden public charge rule is in effect and that it is safe to access programs like Medicaid and SNAP and Section Eight. Also, we try to emphasize that even if the lawsuit succeeded, that doesn’t mean that we’re going to revert automatically back to the Trump rule.”

Tell the stories of people. “We realize that to overcome political abstinence around Medicaid expansion, the solution was to build people power,” Ji said. The Children’s Defense Fund created a grassroots campaign designed to bring constituents directly to decision-makers, she said. She told the story of Trish, who was a single mom to a son with a disability. Trish got an infection from a dog bite but had fallen into the Medicaid coverage cap, leaving her with $2,000 in medical debt that she could not get herself out of.

“One of the things that we saw a lot across our state is that many of the people who are affected by the coverage gap are moms who can’t work full-time because they need to care for someone at home,” Ji said. “Because of that, they’re not able to get employer-sponsored insurance. They are oftentimes experiencing injuries or stresses to their own bodies while caring for another person. We work really hard to try to elevate stories like Trisha’s to our state news outlets.”


This program was sponsored by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Heising-Simons Foundation. NPF is solely responsible for the content.

Michelle Castillo
Deputy Director, Children’s Defense Fund, Texas
Cindy Ji
Communications Director, Children's Defense Fund - Texas
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Transcript
Providing Health Care for Immigrant Children and Families — A Grassroots Strategy
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Resources
Resources for Covering Healthcare for Undocumented Families
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