Posted on 12/22/2025 9:33:22 AM PST by DFG
The Department of Justice is closing a Democrat-created bureaucratic loophole that has allowed legal and illegal migrants to get a huge quantity of taxpayer aid since 1997, despite a 1996 law limiting aid to citizens.
The loophole was created by President Bill Clinton’s administration after Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), which was intended to “strengthen… the principle that [legal and illegal] immigrants come to America to work, not to collect welfare benefits.”
“We now retract that [1997] opinion and offer the best reading of the phrase ‘Federal means-tested public benefit,'” President Donald Trump’s Justice Department said on December 16.
The new rule means that legal and illegal migrants will not be able to claim welfare, food stamps, housing, or healthcare subsidies, and many other aid programs. The aid cutoff will likely force more illegals — especially families — back home because many cannot earn enough money to afford housing, food, healthcare, and other expenses in the United States.
The reduced number of migrants will help raise Americans’ wages, reduce their rents, and encourage sidelined Americans to seek jobs.
“Trump DOJ Undoes Clinton Sabotage of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law,” declared the Center for Immigration Studies. “A quarter-century after PRWORA’s enactment — 52.5 percent of households headed by legal immigrants who had not naturalized… received welfare benefits, as compared to 35.9 percent for households headed by the native-born.”
Members of President Donald Trump’s administration cheered the agency’s decision.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Rapin’ Bill will be saddened...
Big win!’
Big win. It has been reported 90% of Somalis in Minnesota receive some form of government handout.
I voted for this.
L
I voted for this!
When they say that Medicare or SS is running out of money, what they mean is that they have been giving it away to other people who should not get it. If we stop giving away funds to people who do not deserve it, we have more than enough funds.
The democrats have found that the concept of funding limits is not real. They can spend continuously and figure it out later. Knowing that the people who figure it out later is always someone else,
It’s the right and legal move.
But it’s going to spend considerable time in the courts before it’s real.
Make it economically untenable for illegals to stay: make self-deportation the better option. Today it’s the freebies; tomorrow we need employer penalties.
A Democrat-created bureaucratic loophole
<><>allowed legal and illegal migrants to get a huge quantity of taxpayer aid
<><>this since 1997, despite a 1996 law limiting aid to citizens.
<><>loophole was created by President Bill Clinton
<><>1996 Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act,
<><>PROWRA was intended to “strengthen… an American principle
<><>that [legal and illegal] immigrants are to work, not collect welfare.
“We now retract that [1997] opinion and offer the best reading of the phrase ‘Federal means-tested public benefit,’” Pres Trump’s DOJ said Dec 16. The new rule means that legals and illegals can’t claim welfare, food stamps, housing, or healthcare subsidies, and other aid programs......this will likely force more illegal families back to their homelands.
Yeah, I can hear the leftist outrage already ---
Trump starving innocent babies!!!
In a way, it's true. If you sneak into the USA, Trump won't feed you or your kids. You should know this before you cross, we are not obligated to feed or shelter or educate you. Or your kids. Or your relatives.
That sounds kinda harsh, though. I don't like kids to starve, so lets add a loophole --- we'll feed you as long as you're in ICE custody or enroute back to your home country.
Will blue states ignore?
I voted for this.
Why didn’t he do this in his first term? Also, why did this term take 11 months to do this?
Why didn’t he do this in his first term? Also, why did this term take 11 months to do this?
Timmie is not going to like this.
Justice Department Ends Clinton Rule Giving Welfare to Migrants
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
Kudos to PDJT47 and his Justice Department for doing this.
On the other hand, when will repealable (hint) post-17 Amendment ratification ordinary legal voters get the clue that they keep reelecting the same corrupt career, Constitution-ignoring elite Democratic and RINO lawmakers who have stayed in power by using unconstitutional federal welfare to buy illegal votes from illegal aliens imo?
More specifically, respected constitutional experts have clarified that welfare is a state power issue, not the business of the big bad feds.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
The power to regulate manufactures is no more confided to congress, than the power to interfere with [all emphases added] the systems of education, the poor laws, or the road laws of the states. —Justice Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 2, 1833.
The congressional record shows that Rep. John Bingham, a constitutional lawmaker, had clarified the federal government's constitutionally limited powers as follows.
Simply this, that the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen [all emphases added], under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Constitution, is in the States and not in the federal government. I have sought to effect no change in that respect in the Constitution of the country. —John Bingham, Congressional. Globe. 1866, page 1292 (see top half of third column)
From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added]. —United States v. Butler, 1936.
So-called "federal" welfare is one of many examples of the post-17A Congress's abuse of its repealable (another hint) 16th Amendment powers, direct taxes.
The states probably cannot afford to take care of the poor because deep-state Congress keeps stealing state revenues by means of unconstitutional taxes, taxes that Congress cannot reasonably justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers.
More excellent news...
Now, hopefully, the indolent GOP congress critters will stop jacking off long enough to codify the change...
They’re getting my hopes up again.
Here’s another report:
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