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Your assumption that undocumented immigrants receive free health care is false. In fact, food stamps, medicaid and welfare programs all specifically exclude undocumented immigrants from their programs. In their unwarranted fear that some small number of people may enroll illegally, they passed legislation requiring proof of citizenship for Medicaid participation. My mother, born in the US in 1916, was unable to comply with their requirements because the town hall where her birth certificate was filed burned down in the 1920's. Her school records, etc. were insufficient proof. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of American citizens eligible for Medicaid have lost coverage because of the fear that some immigrants would get health care. The Congressional Budget Office said before the bill passed that few undocumented immigrants were on Medicaid since contact with state officials to apply could expose their status, so the bill passed to address a problem that doesn't exist, and now many american citizens have lost their coverage thanks to anti-immigrant hysteria and the false claims such as yours. People who are old and in nursing homes, many of them born before birth certificates were centralized. One woman, for example, was born one year before her country started issuing birth certificates, but because of this sort of anti-immigrant mythology and hysteria, she is now uninsured.

posted 4 years, 11 months ago
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