Earlier this month, The Trump Administration announced a “public charge” rule that would restrict the amount of legal immigrants who use public benefits from receiving green cards. This policy proposal reflects President Trump’s agenda of curbing immigration into the United States.
However, instead of penalizing poor immigrants, President Trump should protect funding for the International Affairs Budget. This $60 billion budget can eliminate the root causes of immigration, such as extreme poverty, violent extremism, and corrupt government institutions. As a result of this international aid, many residents of Central and South America, South Asia, and the Middle East would not possess the urgent need of finding refuge in the United States to create better lives for themselves and their children.
Unfortunately, President Trump has proposed a 24% cut on this budget, against the requests of 100+ military leaders and veterans and 200+ business leaders, all of which he claims to heartily support.
President Trump, I ask you again to please protect the International Affairs Budget. We cannot expect immigrants to arrive in the U.S. as “self-sufficient” when we do not provide them the means to do so. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”
