Obamacare Gives Firms $3k
Incentive to Hire Illegals over Native-Born Workers
Uses Obamacare fee
to advance amnesty plan
(Washington Times) – Under the president’s new
amnesty, businesses will have a $3,000-per-employee incentive to hire illegal
immigrants over native-born workers because of a quirk of Obamacare.
President Obama’s temporary amnesty, which
lasts three years, declares up to 5 million illegal immigrants to be lawfully
in the country and eligible for work permits, but it still deems them
ineligible for public benefits such as buying insurance on Obamacare’s health
exchanges.
Under the Affordable Care Act, that means
businesses who hire them won’t have to pay a penalty for not providing them
health coverage — making them $3,000 more attractive than a similar native-born
worker, whom the business by law would have to cover.
The loophole was confirmed by congressional
aides and drew condemnation from those who said it put illegal immigrants ahead
of Americans in the job market.
“If it is true that the president’s actions
give employers a $3,000 incentive to hire those who came here illegally, he has
added insult to injury,” said Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican. “The
president’s actions would have just moved those who came here illegally to the
front of the line, ahead of unemployed and underemployed Americans.”
A Department of Homeland Security official
confirmed that the newly legalized immigrants won’t have access to Obamacare,
which opens up the loophole for employers looking to avoid the penalty.
The Health and Human Services Department,
which oversees Obamacare, referred questions to the White House, which didn’t
reply to a request for comment.
But Mr. Obama, traveling in Chicago Tuesday to
defend his immigration plans, said his moves would boost the economy and vowed
they wouldn’t hurt American workers’ wages.
“Immigrants are good for the economy. We keep
on hearing that they’re bad, but a report by my Council of Economic Advisers
put out last week shows how the actions we’re taking will grow our economy for
everybody,” he said.
This isn’t the first time the Obamacare
loophole has popped up on immigration. The overhaul bill that passed the Senate
on a bipartisan vote last year created the same situation, granting illegal
immigrants a long probationary period where they could legally work but weren’t
eligible for public benefits such as Obamacare.
At the time, Arizona Sen. John McCain, one of
the bill’s GOP authors, acknowledged the problem and vowed to change it before
it became law. Despite passing the Senate, the bill has stalled, with
Democratic leaders refusing to send it to the House for further action.
Brian Rogers, a spokesman for Mr. McCain, said
Tuesday the solution to the loophole is to get rid of Obamacare’s employer
mandate, “which would eliminate the incentive to hire people who are ineligible
for Obamacare subsidies.” Mr. Rogers said the Republican majority that takes
control of Congress next year should vote on that proposal.
Under Obamacare, businesses with 50 or more
employees are supposed to provide insurance coverage to their full-time
workers. If they refuse, they are assessed a penalty for every employee who
receives subsidies to sign up for coverage on the health exchanges. But because
the newly legalized illegal immigrants covered by Mr. Obama’s order can’t sign
up for the exchanges or receive subsidies, employers aren’t penalized for
hiring them.
Employers take
notice
Some employers have already taken notice, and
Dennis Michael Lynch, a documentary filmmaker, raised the issue on political
strategist Dick Morris’s radio show in Philadelphia over the weekend.
“The dimensions of this problem are enormous.
One wonders if any of Obama’s crew spotted it during the run-up to his
executive order. It is hard to imagine former President Clinton failing to
notice such a conflict between his two major programs,” Mr. Morris said in an
op-ed Tuesday in The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper.
The Obama administration has delayed the
employer mandate penalty for some businesses, but it is slated to take full
effect in a year.
The public is split on Mr. Obama’s latest
immigration move. A new Quinnipiac University Poll released Tuesday showed
slightly more people opposed the president taking unilateral action than supported
him.
Just as striking, however, is that overall
support for illegal immigrants in America is at an all-time low in the
Quinnipiac survey, with 35 percent now saying they should all be pushed out of
the country — up from 26 percent just a year ago.
Mr. Obama created the Obamacare loophole
incentive in a 2012 Homeland Security decision.
Until August of that year, those granted
“deferred action” — the power Mr. Obama also used in his new temporary amnesty
— were eligible for public benefits, including Obamacare. But just two months
earlier, Mr. Obama had announced a massive expansion of deferred action for
hundreds of thousands of “dreamers,” or young illegal immigrants brought to the
U.S. as children, and in order to prevent them from getting public benefits,
Homeland Security officials issued a new policy giving the dreamers a new
category of legal status that left them outside of Obamacare.
Immigrant rights groups protested the move at
the time, arguing it left the newly legal dreamers without coverage. The
National Immigration Law Center said excluding dreamers from Obamacare amounted
to discrimination against tax-paying immigrants who are following the rules,
and set up a new second-class status for some immigrants.
The NILC didn’t respond to a request for
comment on Mr. Obama’s latest move.
Comments
In a crony environment, those with the shovel
ready jobs have already been alerted to recruit the 5 million. If most of the 5
million are in California or Texas, look for these firms to spring up.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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