Chris Powell: Extending medical insurance to illegal immigrants draws in more of them

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Connecticut's nullification of federal immigration law proceeded this month as state government extended its welfare system's medical insurance to illegal immigrant children by three years, from 12 and under to 15 and under. The children being added will be able to keep their state coverage until they turn 19 -- and maybe, as seems likely, by the time they turn 19 Connecticut will have extended eligibility to a higher age.

Such gradualism is how Gov. Ned Lamont and the Democratic majority in the General Assembly have been handling the issue for years now. They have been maintaining both that decency requires covering all illegal immigrant children and -- in contradiction -- that the state can afford to cover only a few thousand more every year. This gradualism obscures the budgetary and nullification issues enough that most people don't notice and make a fuss about them.

While the policy being pursued by state government may make political sense, it is still mistaken. Its logic is that Connecticut somehow can afford to lift all of Central America and much of the rest of the world out of poverty in the next decade, and it encourages more people to violate federal immigration law.

Advocates of extending the medical insurance to more illegal immigrant children note that even without such insurance Connecticut's hospitals will always have to treat illegal immigrant children when they come to emergency rooms with urgent conditions, and that when such patients or their guardians don't pay, hospitals essentially will transfer the expense to state government and patients who do pay for themselves. 

But this rationale does not acknowledge that providing medical insurance to illegal immigrant children rewards and incentivizes illegal immigration to Connecticut and that if the state did not extend the insurance, the parents or guardians of the children being covered might relocate to other states providing coverage. It's not as if illegal immigrants in the United States have no choice but to live in Connecticut. Like everyone else they may look for the place where they are treated best.

While Governor Lamont supported the latest extension of insurance, when it took effect the other day he implied that he had some reservations about it, saying it should be accompanied by "comprehensive immigration reform." But of course it has  not been accompanied by "comprehensive immigration reform," and the governor didn't specify what "comprehensive immigration reform" is. 

Is it mass amnesty, making all illegal immigrants legal, as many other Democrats want? 

Is it deporting all 12 million or so illegal immigrants estimated to be in the country, the objective that has been proclaimed by presidential candidate Donald Trump without an explanation of how the logistical difficulties would be met?

Is it to continue having open borders most of the time, as advocated by Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy via the dishonest "compromise" legislation he proposed in February with Sens. James Lankford (R.-Okla.), and Kyrsten Sinema, the former Democrat and now nominal independent from Arizona?

In any case the millions of illegal and unvetted immigrants who have entered the country since President Biden took office are not an accident but policy, a policy of devaluing citizenship and hastening change in the country's demographics and its democratic and secular culture. Extending medical insurance to illegal immigrants -- on top of driver's licenses and other government identification documents, housing, and food subsidies -- is part of that policy. So is forbidding state and municipal police from assisting federal immigration agents, as Connecticut forbids them, thereby making itself a "sanctuary state."

If illegal immigration is never to be simply stopped  and immigration law simply enforced, the country won't be a country anymore.

The United States long has welcomed immigration and should continue to do so. But immigration must be limited to what the country can assimilate  in normal circumstances. A desperate national housing shortage, strain on hospitals, and schools overwhelmed with students who don't speak English signify the obliviousness to illegal immigration by both the federal government and state government.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).