SDoH Perspectives: Trump’s Immigrant wealth test is an attack on the Millennial Middle Class
On Monday, the Supreme Court had a 5–4 approval of a new rule that is designed to screen out green card applicants who might become dependent on government benefits. Previously, public charge mean that a green-card holder was receiving cash benefits from the government and were primarily dependent on that aid. The rule focuses on expanding the definition of public charge to include the likelihood to receive public benefits such as Medicaid, public housing assistance or food stamps for more than 12 months over a 36 month period. To do that, the Department of Homeland Security can consider factors such as age, health, education, English-language proficiency, wealth and credit score.
The goal of this policy, its architects and this administration should be clear: a wholesale reduction of in-bound migration. However, by making immigration more difficult through this policy it represents a shortsighted direction for this already foolhardy administration. This policy is an attack not just on immigrants but equally on the poor- and middle-class US-born Americans. It starts by being based off of a misconception that immigrants abuse public benefits. The reality is that individual immigrants use public assistance programs at lower rates and at lower levels than native-born Americans. While parading as a reasonable caution to reduce spending on means-tested government programs, it doesn’t consider the crucial role that immigrants play in a growing economy and health ecosystem which I’ll narrow down to one critical factor: housing.
Housing can be seen as a key driver between income and health. Access to stable housing is shown to improve health outcomes and reduce health care costs in low-income and vulnerable populations. About four in five U.S. housing markets are seeing home prices rise faster than wages. A recent study found that a full-time, minimum-wage earner cannot afford a “modest” two-bedroom apartment in any county nationwide without spending more than HUD’s threshold for the definition of “affordable housing.” While our salaries are still getting out of that housing recession from 15 years ago, housing prices are soaring. This means more housing instability for groups that historically would and should have otherwise been moving towards affluence. As we subject ourselves to these sub par structural determinants of our health like poor housing and air quality or neighborhoods with no access to safety or physical activity - we’re getting unhealthier in the process. That could mean middle-class millennials who eventually wind up in low-income housing due to housing shortages, or the low-income individuals who get pushed their a step before that. It’s a cycle.
We also know that the increasingly growing student debt that the millennial populations take on also reduces chances of home ownership. In 2019, Freddie Mac recently found that more than half of workers employed in the “essential workforce,” including in fields such as health care, education and law enforcement, have made their housing decisions based on their student debt. Simply put: we’re taking on more student debt and then renting for longer because we’re still paying off our loans, while never being able to scrounge together enough for a down-payment on a property to purchase. Even more simply, we’re building wealth, just much slower than generations’ past. Those past generations had something called “The American Dream.” This was the basic idea of upward mobility or that all of our children will have the chance at economic success.
In other words: 90% of children born in 1940 grew up to earn more than their parents. Children born in the 1980s who are now in their 30s, aka the middle of that millennial cohort, are now around 50%. Economist Raj Chetty called this the 50–50 shot at that American Dream. But what does this have to do with the the immigrant wealth test? This new test is not considerate of the immense value that immigrants have provide in just a generation’s time. Chetty continues to talk about upward mobility with regard to immigrants in particular: “immigrants who come to the United States have the highest levels of upward mobility — much higher levels of upward mobility than children born within the United States.” That comes from searching for opportunity, meaning that if you’re migrating to the United States — you’re likely doing it to improve your social or economic standing.
More immediately however, the new policy overlooks the critical role that immigrants add to the U.S. housing market right now. Partnership for a New American Economy estimates that immigrants in the U.S. have created $3.7 trillion in housing wealth. Moreover, they revitalize less than desirable neighborhoods in costly metropolitan areas, opening up new alternatives for middle- and working class-Americans to buy homes. Perhaps most importantly, low-income immigrants come to the country help fill jobs especially as Boomers continue to age out of their current roles. As immigrants continue to progress, they start businesses and create jobs that ultimately help grow communities.
This is undoubtedly related to the problem of gentrification, or the notion that a neighborhood’s working class residents are displaced by an influx of higher-income occupiers. Interviews of those displaced by New York City gentrification found that many ended up living in low-income housing, overcrowded apartments, shelters or even homeless. What I want to make clear is that I am not suggesting that immigrants need to stay to take on the brunt of gentrification and suffering worse life outcomes because of it. What I am suggesting, however, is that immigrants help maintain a necessary balance to an ecosystem that locally born middle class equivalents cannot currently engage in. Basically, income inequality has reduced that upward mobility particularly around housing.
My home state is just one of many places that have seen this process live on. As New York City’s costs start to push the need for affordable housing out into previously “rough” parts like Hoboken, Jersey City and even Newark, revitalization has occurred to the point where housing costs in those first two cities are arguably on par with that of New York City proper. As prices increase, newer immigrants move out to these rough areas like pioneers and help grow a new economy in areas that were otherwise stricken with drugs, crime and poverty. They take the chances that native born middle-class yuppies like me wouldn’t take for another 10–15 years.
Their impact goes beyond housing: in New Jersey, they’re also contributing nearly $20 Billion in federal, state and local taxes or about 24% of the state’s total share. These 1.3 million workers represented 28% of the labor force in 2015, mostly in healthcare, manufacturing, retail trade, food and professional or scientific services. These factors surrounding the growth of immigrants is helping reverse the problems with gentrification. New American Economy also points out that immigrants tend to avoid places with the worst housing affordability problems. They reverse the problems inspired by white-flight policies, and helped stabilize declining population numbers. This can be seen in urban places like Newark or in San Francisco’s bay, Rust Belt cities like Detroit and Chicago, or even in rural places like Georgia and North Carolina too.
We need to reject this rule, not only because it is built on xenophobia and classism, but because it is just completely short sighted from an economic and health policy perspective. While the current system is far from ideal, it maintains the opportunity for urban (and rural) redevelopment, vitalization and growth that is still somehow responding to redlining, the recession and decades of mixed housing and economic programs. Without fostering a pipeline of lower income immigrants who are actually moving to this country to seek out opportunity, we are creating stagnancy in this ecosystem. We will wait for the hopeful eventuality that US born millennials can overcome the struggles of the recession and slow the rise of housing costs. The result could be an increasing inequality of income, health outcomes and related factors like the lack of affordability of housing that lies in between.
