Roger Marshall’s cruel anti-immigrant stunt ignores the realities of Kansas’ economy

The holidays are supposed to be a time of joy and generosity — peace on Earth, good will to men and all that. Sen. Roger Marshall is different, though. He decided to ring in the season with an act of performative cruelty toward immigrants.

Long story short: If you’re a newcomer to America who has ever needed federal help paying for health care or feeding your family, the Kansas Republican doesn’t want you here.

So on the day before Thanksgiving, Marshall announced his opposition to a proposed new rule from the Department of Homeland Security that enshrines an old understanding of which migrants are and aren’t allowed to obtain permanent residence in this country. Federal law has long declined green cards and visas to newcomers who are likely to become a “public charge” — that is, who have taken or will take more than they contribute to the common good. That determination is based on a variety of factors, including the migrant’s age and health, and whether they’ve ever received cash welfare benefits from the state or federal governments.

In its anti-immigrant zeal — and in the face of vocal opposition — the Trump administration added some new wrinkles to the policy in 2020, declaring that migrants who had received noncash benefits such as Medicaid assistance or food stamps would be penalized on their applications for permanent residence. The Biden administration stopped enforcing those provisions when it took office, and is now finalizing a new rule that restores the older way of doing things.

Marshall, naturally, opposes the change.

“DHS’ proposed public charge rules continue our country down the dangerous path of incentivizing migrants to illegally cross our southern border,” he thundered in a pre-holiday press release.

His preferred policies are harmful and — again — cruel.

First, the harmful part. As the University of Missouri’s Chenoa D. Allen writes in the latest edition of the American Journal of Public Health, the on-paper effects of the Trump-era rule weren’t that big: There just weren’t that many migrants who were eligible for both Medicaid and green cards.

But there were some terrible consequences, Allen writes, largely because publicity surrounding the rule caused many families to shun any kind of assistance, including help from private nonprofit agencies.

Migrant parents who gave birth after the rule was announced were slower to apply for Medicaid assistance and thus “were more likely to have delayed, inadequate or no prenatal care, and had smaller babies.” And once the coronavirus pandemic hit American shores, those “immigrants were afraid to access COVID-19 testing and vaccination.” That reluctance “may have exacerbated the COVID-19 crisis.”

So much for pro-life conservatism.

The cruelty of Marshall’s stance becomes even more apparent if you look to western Kansas, where a dominant meatpacking industry has thrived for decades on the back of a largely immigrant workforce (many of whom break immigration laws — with their employers’ full knowledge). Tyson provides more than 1 in 5 jobs in Finney County — but as Kansas News Service recently reported, nearly half the people seeking help at a Garden City food pantry come from households with people employed at the local Tyson plant.

“By the time you pay your rent, by the time you pay your utilities … they don’t have enough for food,” the pantry’s director, Robin Marsh, told the news service.

The senator’s angry words about “incentivizing migrants” plays into the fantasies of those right-wing activists who see immigrants as a dangerous drag on society, sponging off public programs paid for by “real” Americans. Reality looks more like our Kansas neighbors, working difficult and often-brutal jobs that put meat on your table — and who still, after all that effort, need a little help.

Those are the folks Marshall would penalize.

Democrats still control the White House and Senate, so Marshall’s effort to block the new DHS rule isn’t going anywhere. His pre-Thanksgiving press release earned him loving headlines in right-wing outlets such as Breitbart and The Daily Caller, though. The senator gave himself the gift of publicity for the holidays, and all it cost was a cheap shot at immigrant workers.