The Origins of Denying Benefits to Legal Immigrants

I had a brief conversation with a spokesperson for La Raza today, and she informed me that legal immigrants were denied coverage under state Children's Health Insurance Plans (SCHIP) from its very beginning in the mid-1990s. President Clinton agreed to the provision as a sop to the Republicans in Congress who opposed the original bill. Now that they're renewing the program (and hopefully expanding it to cover 10 million kids instead of the 6.6 million it now covers), Democrats in the House had hoped to remove that onerous provision and extend the benefit to the children of legal immigrants who otherwise meet the program criteria. The La Raza spokeswoman said that would be anywhere from 200,000 to 400,000 additional kids. Alas, no dice. The Senate-led compromise eliminated the provision.

I'm still for the bill. But this is an easy fix and would be the morally right thing to do. If you're an immigrant, you have a green card, you work hard and pay your taxes despite having an employer who doesn't provide health insurance, it only seems right that your kids should be able to take advantage of this program if your income is too low to buy your own health insurance. Alas, not in our America.

La Raza has withdrawn its support from the bill. And I suspect a number of liberal Hispanic legislators will oppose it. Those are votes the Democrats didn't have to lose.