Posted on 02/19/2010 7:18:04 PM PST by Man50D
On the heels of a federal crackdown, lawmakers in Nebraska are scrambling to pass legislation that will allow pregnant illegal immigrant women to continue receiving free, taxpayer-financed medical care.
The state has for decades offered the costly perk to pregnant illegal aliens, whose “anchor babies” are automatically United States citizens. However, the federal government recently notified the state that it was illegally determining eligibility for publicly-funded medical care known as Medicaid.
Nebraska has skirted federal guidelines by using the illegal immigrants’ yet-to-be-born children to qualify for the medical care otherwise not available to undocumented aliens. Nebraska women who are legal U.S. residents will continue receiving Medicaid, the state-federal insurance program for the poor, once the state follows the federal guidelines but illegal immigrants won’t.
As the cutoff date approaches, legislators in the Cornhusker State are frantically working to pass a law that will allow the state’s estimated 1,000 pregnant illegal immigrants to keep their public medical coverage. The deadline is in early March and a state senator from Lincoln, Kathy Campbell, has introduced a measure to create a new program—funded by both the state and the federal government—aimed at restoring the coverage for illegal immigrants.
Under the proposed law, Nebraska will create a special standalone program under an existing federal children’s insurance plan that will allow the illegal alien mothers to receive prenatal-care coverage similar to when the state violated federal Medicaid rules. Of course, U.S. taxpayers will fund the project.
At least one Nebraska senator, John Nelson, questioned the measure’s fiscal impact and wondered if the state provides care for those here illegally, how many more will come to Nebraska to take advantage of the program. Another senator (Charlie Jansen) pointed out that illegal immigrants will continue using state benefits until the problem is addressed by lawmakers.
Fourteen states—including California, New York and Texas—already have similar programs that provide illegal immigrants with free government-funded medical care when they are pregnant. Once their anchor babies are born, the family receives a plethora of public assistance including food stamps and monthly welfare checks.
Illegals are bankrupting CA, Florida, AZ and the USA.
Stabilize and return to country of origin.
I don’t even see a way out of this mess.
>”will allow pregnant illegal immigrant women to continue receiving free, taxpayer-financed medical care. “
Got news for ya. This already happens. Its called Medicaid. No body in their right mind is gonna wheel a pregnant woman from another country out to the street and say “you dont live here, so F### you”.
This always has happened, does, and always will.
If you want to solve the problem, attacking a woman 9 months pregnant is not the way to proceed.
Sigh... I'll keep fightin' though!
I do.
If you bus these freeloaders back across the border and inform them that the next time will include jail time and their children finding a new home south of the border possibly not their country of origin. They will determine that the game is not worth playing.
Send them the bill and send them packing.
I agree that’s what we should do, however, I also believe it will never happen.
There’s a simple answer, that doesn’t require an amendment to the Constitution.
Simply treat undocumented immigrants the same as visitors who have arrived on a Visa - any children born to a Visaholder legally is a citizen of the state of origin of its parent(s), and cannot obtain a Birth Certificate here (they have to visit their respective foreign consulate for that).
All this requires is an added classification to existing rules, of a traveller “without a Visa” and to extend the same existing restrictions to them.
There’s a simple answer to the Anchor Baby issue, that doesn’t require an amendment to the Constitution.
Simply treat undocumented immigrants the same as visitors who have arrived on a Visa - any children born to a Visaholder legally is a citizen of the state of origin of its parent(s), and cannot obtain a Birth Certificate here (they have to visit their respective foreign consulate for that).
All this requires is an added classification to existing rules, of a traveller “without a Visa” and to extend the same existing restrictions to them.
Yes, but it will never happen because there is a benefit to those who make the laws to continue to have anchor babies pouring over the border.
ping
In 2011 we may have a different reality, that would get something like that passed.
Lefty liberals’ main political test is that a fetus is not a person, so abortion is OK. Yet, when there is an illegal alien mama who is p. g.:
“Nebraska has skirted federal guidelines by using the illegal immigrants’ yet-to-be-born children to qualify for the medical care otherwise not available to undocumented aliens.”
I guess the potential Democrat voter (illegals) trump the lefty party line.
Capture and deport!!!
Perfect solution. Shows compassion as well as obeying our laws.
I had decent insurance coverage for the medical expenses I incurred with the birth of my child.
One of my co-workers was still making payments on one of his childrens birth, six years after the fact.(He and his wife had no health insurance at the time)
We are both natural born citizens.
Can you tell me why you “think” a non-citizen, the law breaking illegal alien who is not even supposed to be living in this country in the first place, should get a free medical ride?
Please explain it in a way that both my former co-worker, who eventually paid off his medical debt, and myself, who kept paying ever escalating insurance premiums untill I had to choose between day to day subsistence or insurance (BTW, the same choice my co-worker once made) can comprehend.
We both eagerly await your next written words of compassionate wisdom. //sarcasm alert.
Care for a cup of tea?
It is not called Medicaid. In Texas it is called “Title V.” It is 100% free for patients, with not even the slightest co-pay.
These women get prenatal care for 9 months BEFORE having the baby...outpatient stuff, where the billing is done precisely through programs for pre-identified illegal aliens. Doctors and hospitals actually make money on it, maybe not as much as from private insurance, but enough to bribe them into not complaining about the government’s failure to enforce the immigration laws on people who it identifies as being here illegally.
These programs like “Title V” identify illegal aliens who are pregnant EARLY, women who are not even “showing” yet; but instead of prosecuting the broken immigration laws, they invite these patients to free monthly and weekly pre-natal visits for 9 months, then a free delivery, and then more. I bet in Texas that 10,000 deliveries a year happen on Title V for illegal alien mothers. At an average combined cost of say $6000 for the hospital for the mom and the new baby who otherwise would not be here, that is $60 million a year, and that’s way conservative, probably cost is much higher. Free prenatal care, free delivery and any operations needed, free postnatal care, free nursery and ICU, free medicines, free WIC, it goes on and on.
That’s NOT the same thing as turning away a laboring 9 month pregnant patient from the ER — I agree no one is going to do that.
It is just a dishonest thing for our government to be doing. It might seem nice and compassionate for some, but we are teaching people to flout the law. We are teaching people that as long as someone “votes” on it, it is fine to ignore the Constitution and extort money from ‘We the People’ at the point of a gun to use it for funding the nice compassionate thing.
The only real honest and compassionate thing to do is enforce our immigration laws, and promptly send people home when they are caught living here illegally. If We the People actually wanted to promote more immigration, then we would need to change the law so it happens legally.
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