Over eleven million immigrants live in the United States today. Immigrants who have recently came to the United States cannot get any benefits like food stamps, Medicare, Supplement Security Income (SSI), and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (IANF) until they have been in the country for a minimum of ten years. Once immigrants come to the United States of America, they have nothing in their possessions. They must find a place to live, they must find a job, and if they don’t have any transportation, they must save up to buy one, so they can get to work and any other important place they might have to go. Because of all the saving and buying they will have to do, they will not be able to get medical insurance right away and they will be struggling to buy groceries.
As immigrants come to the United States legally, they are given no types of benefits. In Harris Myers’s article, Trump Rule Would Penalize Legal Immigrants for Using Medicaid and CHIP, he writes about a legal immigrant family who has been in the United States for a while. Harris explains how Cristian, the son of the family, has leukemia and the family uses Medicaid to pay for the costly treatment. They have been in the United States for over ten years, so they could luckily qualify for the benefits. Without the Medicaid benefits, Cristian could have never gotten the treatment he needed, or the family could have been in serious debt. If legal immigrants were given benefits as they become citizens of the United States, they would be more motivated to work harder to live the American dream.
Immigration Issues 