Flashback: Illegal immigrants sue U.S. government after getting kicked out of Obamacare

Monday, August 29, 2016 by: PF Louis
Tags: Obamacare, illegal immigrants, lawsuit

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(NaturalNews) When people from other nations cannot provide any proof of legal residence, such as even a green card, there should be no problems with not granting inexpensive or free healthcare to them. A green card allows someone to work and live in the USA, but it is one level below full citizenship.

It was in late September of 2014 that Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter claimed that the Obama Administration was "bending over backwards" to grant illegal immigrants healthcare privileges under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly known as Obamacare.

Perhaps as a response to Vitter's accusation, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), which implements the ACA, dropped 115,000 ACA applicants on September 30 because they hadn't come up with the paperwork necessary to prove permanent legal residency status. This can be verified with the various forms of Green Card documentation even if one is not yet a US citizen.

Then, a backlash flap occurred from the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) and Philadelphia's Southeast Asian Mutual Assistance Associations Coalition (SEAMACC). They both filed complaints with Health and Human Services' Office of Civil Rights for failing to provide demands for legal immigration or citizenship documentation in their native languages.

"CMS is not taking responsibility for completely failing on the language-access provision," said Thoai Nguyen, SEAMAAC CEO. Maybe so. But if there are several languages involved, that could be problematic. Besides, the burden of proof should be on the applicant who, it seems, could be able to get help from a friend, employer or relative who could speak English, maybe?

The Obama Administration did bend "over backwards" from this backlash by permitting those dropped to re-enroll before the new enrollment period that begins on November 15, 2014. Yet, that wasn't good enough for some. "We're worried that the people we're working on behalf of don't realize that this is available to them," Alvaro Huerto, an attorney at the National Immigration Law Center.

The ICIRR group complained that many of their clients "are low-income clients and are elderly or disabled. If these individuals lose their subsidies, they will not be able to afford the health insurance they need. To make matters worse, many clients submitted the requested immigration or citizenship documents, but for some reason these documents were not processed."

Well, the last part makes sense and is appropriate for attempts at dealing with large bureaucracies. But the first part is silly. If they've been here long enough to be low-income or disabled when only the able can sneak in easily, then where's their Green Card?

A quick visit to Mexico please

Many Americans had retired in Mexico prior to Obamacare's shaky universal healthcare impersonation to take advantage of that country's low-cost national annual insurance fees. Mexico requires permanent residency credentials, usually FM3 or FM2 for non-Mexicans to take advantage of their inexpensive annual social security health insurance.

The procedure for obtaining either FM3 or FM2, sort of like our Green Cards without a work permit, is extensive and not online, at least when this author lived there in 2009-10. Work permits are even harder to get. Guess what, those procedures are all in Spanish only.

One has to hire a person who is licensed by the Mexican government to get through them. It requires income and/or savings at specified levels to prove one can stick around -- translated to Spanish. If either complaining organization really cared about language-challenged immigrants, they should refer interpreters to help out.

In Mexico, the government does not provide them. Instead, there are licensed interpreters who are in business for themselves to offer their services, which include real estate closings, for a fee.

Sources for this article include:

http://dailycaller.com

http://dailycaller.com

http://insurance.lovetoknow.com

http://dailycaller.com

http://www.chapala.com

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com