Is California Starting a Trend with Increasing Immigration Benefits?

• Author: Michael Bordonada
• Posted: 2024-10-15

The status of immigrant benefits has been a politically infused discussion in the United States for decades. We will look at benefits for documented and undocumented immigrants. Historically, the United States has not provided benefits to undocumented immigrants. However, this is beginning to change as immigrants' health needs have been effectively paid for with United States taxes either way.

DHS Benefits for Documented Immigrants

For those immigrants who are documented, the Department of Homeland Security provides certain federal benefits. This department of the federal government provides immigrants with the ability to naturalize to gain citizenship. It also performs work authorization grants to those immigrants who wish to work and are eligible to do so.

Once someone has become a documented immigrant who is a citizen, they may collect a number of benefits federally. This includes Medicaid, a program for low-income immigrant Americans and grants them the ability to get free or discounted healthcare for them and their families. New immigrant citizens also qualify for unemployment benefits and disaster relief benefits. For those immigrants who are housing-insecure, Section 8 benefits are available. Now called "Housing Choice Vouchers," Section 8 provides housing support. The SNAP/EBT program provides a certain amount of money per month to go towards food purchases.

Of course, on top of federal benefits, new immigrants can also take advantage of state-level benefits. Some of these state benefits add money to federal benefits with state funds. New immigrants will need to research their states' Social Services agencies.

What Trend Is Starting in California?

California has a state-level implementation of Medicaid, known as "Medi-Cal." It provides healthcare to millions of Californians. In general, state implementations of Medicaid follow federal rules in order to have the entire cost footed by the federal government. However, they are permitted to add extra classes of people covered if the state foots the part of the bill to cover those individuals.

Before last Summer, no states had laws ordering healthcare be provided to undocumented immigrants. Documented immigrants have always been covered under the federal Medicaid implementation. To be clear, there are several states that still do not provide Medicaid to all low-income adults. Also known as a "Medicaid expansion," most states signed into law around 2014 an order to expand Medicaid coverage to all low-income adults. The original federal Medicaid implementation only covered families with children and not any single adults.

However, last year, California's legislature passed a law that further expands Medicaid eligibility. It expands eligibility to undocumented immigrants over 50 years of age. While those undocumented immigrants under 50 do not automatically qualify for Medicaid, those over 50 years of age do. This is because, as the governor said, there are certain populations who are more vulnerable to contagions like COVID-19.

California's approach essentially provides an equivalent to Medicare for undocumented immigrants. Medicare is a federal program that provides health care to seniors, while Medicaid is a federal program dedicated to providing similar health benefits to the general population who require it because of their indigent statuses.

Why California's Expansion Is Starting a Trend

Although California's expansion is embroiled in political discussions, one thing is certain. COVID-19 demonstrated that without a public health net like California's expansion, there is a hospital and billing nightmare for the general population. Many states saw a large number of people go into bankruptcy due to healthcare problems.

While political bents have caused some state leaders to declare a ban on expansion of Medicaid, the pandemic has shown us that the cost of healthcare in the end falls on public taxes. This is a more proactive approach to healthcare by providing people a chance to get physicals and healthcare for everyday problems. Historically, people who cannot afford healthcare have needed to go to hospitals to receive emergency care for problems only once they're serious enough to require hospital treatment. This is because doctors' offices may refuse service due to lack of ability to pay, while emergency rooms may not per federal law.

Hospitals can bill more easily, patients can pay more easily, and health issues are detected earlier using this model of eventual full Medicaid expansion.