DHS could weigh immigrants' use of Medicaid, food and housing help in green card decisions

By

July 16, 2026 / 7:00 AM EDT

/ CBS News

Add CBS News on Google

In a move that will place hundreds of thousands of green card applicants under broader scrutiny each year, the Trump administration is allowing immigration officers to consider whether some applicants have used taxpayer-funded benefits — including Medicaid, food stamps and housing assistance — when determining whether they qualify for permanent legal status.The Department of Homeland Security is poised to rescind a 2022 Biden-era regulation narrowing how officers apply a long-standing "public charge" test — an immigration screening tool used to determine whether applicants are likely to rely on government support — according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials.The change may directly affect hundreds of thousands of people applying for green cards from inside the U.S. each year. It could trigger a broader ripple effect if immigrant families avoid health care, food, or housing assistance — even when they or their U.S.-citizen children legally qualify — out of fear that tapping into those benefits could ultimately hurt their immigration cases.What does the final rule change?Under existing federal immigration law, some individuals applying for a visa, admission to the U.S. or green cards can be deemed inadmissible if the government determines they are likely "at any time" to become a public charge.The Biden-era rule, issued in 2022, limited the benefits DHS could consider to primarily cash welfare payments meant to cover basic living expenses and long-term institutional care paid for by the federal government.The new final rule restores the broader discretion USCIS had during the first Trump administration, so that officers can conduct case-by-case reviews that consider an applicant's age, health, family status, assets, financial resources, education, skills and whether the person has received means-tested taxpayer-funded benefits.Those benefits can include food stamps, Medicaid and even housing assistance, according to USCIS officials.