Stephanopoulos Checks Pawlenty On Verification: ‘They Spent $8 Million,’ ‘Caught 8 Illegal Immigrants’
Stephanopoulos Checks Pawlenty On Verification: ‘They Spent $8 Million,’ ‘Caught 8 Illegal Immigrants’
This morning, on ABC’s This Week, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) suggested that unless the government has “the enforcement mechanism in place,” undocumented immigrants will receive health care coverage under health care reform. Host George Stephanopoulos challenged Pawlenty by pointing to a House oversight committee report which reviewed six state Medicaid programs in 2007 and found that “they spent about $8 million to enforce it and caught 8 illegal immigrants”:
PAWLENTY: Even if you have language that says illegal immigrants will not be part of this program, unless you have the enforcement mechanism in place, it doesn’t mean much. In Minnesota, we have laws that say illegal immigrants won’t get many services but unless somebody actually checks, guess what, they show up and get the services.
STEPHANOPOULOS: This enforcement though, there has been a study done by the House oversight committee that showed in these Medicaid provisions, they spent about $8 million to enforce it and caught 8 illegal immigrants.
Pawlenty, caught off-guard, simply replied, “Well, clearly, though, if you have a law that’s unenforced, it isn’t much of a law.” Watch it:
As Andrea Nill points out, “when Colorado passed a series of stringent measures requiring applicants for most state benefits to prove their immigration status, it cost the state $2 million in its first year alone and state officials could not prove that any undocumented immigrants” applied for the program in the first place. The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act already prohibits undocumented immigrants from being eligible for most public benefits, restricts the eligibility of legal immigrants, and codifies procedures for verifying eligibility in a way that guaranteed that almost no immigrant would slip through cracks in theory and in practice.
In fact, documentation requirements may be weeding out more eligible applicants than illegals. According to a report from the Government Accountability Office, verification requirements have led thousands of Americans eligible for Medicaid to lose coverage and added new administrative costs that “far exceeded the savings.”
6 Responses to “Stephanopoulos Checks Pawlenty On Verification: ‘They Spent $8 Million,’ ‘Caught 8 Illegal Immigrants’”
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We have been dealing with a Bush administration that failed to adequately enforce immigration and any means of detecting illegals, and now Obama who wants amnesty for all law breakers.
The idea that it is difficult for eligble applicants to prove who they were is a lot of nonsense.
The Real ID Act required the proof of legal presence and verified using Social Scurity Numbers(SSN’s) through the Social Security On Line Verification(SSOLV).
If you can’t get your defication together enough to prove who you are, where you were born, and whether you have a SSN or TIN, or find someone to assist you to do so then how do they feed themselves?
September 13th, 2009 at 12:15 pmEver think the reason why so few illegal aliens were caught is because of the verification program, they did not sign up, knowing they would be checked.
Look at our immigration laws. They ban employers from hiring foreigners here illegally, but without verification and enforcement mechanism, 12 million illegals have used document fraud and id theft to illegally obtain jobs.
If there is no verification and enforcement in the health care bill, what is to stop foreigners here illegally from using thier fraudulend docs and stolen ids to get coverage?
Absolutely nothing.
September 13th, 2009 at 4:26 pmThe incident that occurred in Congress by Rep. Joe Wilson R-NC, illustrates the consequences of a blurring line between illegal immigration and health care. Our politicians have been alerted to the angry voices of the American people. For once they have disregarded the business campaign contributors and all the cloaked gifts given for services rendered by special interest lobbyists. Millions of US citizens are enraged with the status quo buying favors from our representatives that has led to our wilting economy. Today speaking on behalf of Washington committees on health care, the lawmaking emphasized that illegal aliens cannot access the new health reform package, that any person applying will be checked through government databases.
E-Verify might be implemented for this very issue, that it has shown in the majority of cases remarkable successes in remove illegal alien workers from the working environment. E-Verify can solve this problem and bring sanity back to immigration enforcement. E-VERIFICATION OF EACH AND EVERY AMERICAN WORKER MUST BE MADE PERMANENT? NOT JUST VOLUNTARY POLICY, BUT AS A FULL FORCE OF OPERATION CARRYING STRICT PENALTIES. This operation will work under federal policies? But what about state laws? California as an example is a Sanctuary state for millions of illegal immigrants and their families? Other border states are also occupied by large proportions of unlawful populations of foreign nationals?
This last year has culminated in huge financial losses in California caused by millions of low income illegal aliens, which has created a third world community within the United States. There must be federal measures to bring under control, massive spending benefits for people who have no right from benefiting from those who come here legally or were born here. How can any public health care option work at a state level, when states like California ignore federal law, regarding financial refuge to indigent people? Our own people remain homeless and in many cases without hope, when legislators have prioritized, health care, education an overloaded jail system and easy welfare money for illegal immigrants?
The once golden state has been using taxpayer money, to support illegal aliens, when the same expenditures should have been adopted for a collapsing infrastructure. Highways, schools, tunnels, bridges and dams in a dangerous state of disrepair? Our legislators in many cases have been seduced by lobbyists and should be banned from any contact with our politicians. This will never happen, but something must be done? Millions have been spent on derailing the health care reform currently and in the past, as has immigration enforcement. Rescinding 287(g) federal training for local police enforcement of immigration laws, the NO MATCH LETTER and the cutting back on ICE raids on obnoxious businesses using foreign workers.
The order to crush E-verify was given to Sen.Harry Reid, Speaker Pelosi, Janet Napolitano, but narrowly survived in the Senate chambers. Both political parties are equally to blame for not enforcing the 1986 Immigration Control & Reform Act that was inundated with fraud and a desire to weaken the laws. Now they want to rescind that law, offering yet another reform package that will never function? Let’s not kid ourselves! Huge veiled forces are at work to import as much cheap labor as possible with no restraints, lowering wages and an unconscionable burden on taxpayers.
DON’T LET THE POWERS IN WASHINGTON WHITEWASH THE FACTS! DEMAND THE ORIGINAL DESIGNED FENCE AND THE FULL IMPLEMENTATION OF E-VERIFY, 287 (g), THE SAVE ACT AND AS WRITTEN, THE 1986 SIMPSON/MAZZOLI BILL AND AMEND THEM IF NEED BE? NO MORE IMMIGRATION REFORM? DO THE JOB THEY WERE VOTED FOR? CALL YOUR POLITICIANS AT 202-224-3121 AND DEMAND THESE LAWS BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE? MORE ANSWERS FOUND AT NUMBERSUSA & JUDICIAL WATCH.
September 13th, 2009 at 7:41 pmWhich do you think would make you angrier: undocumented workers with drug resistant tuberculosis coughing on your lettuce because they are left without treatment, or the universal coverage which gives the vast majority of countries which have it longer lifespans than we have in the U.S.?
September 13th, 2009 at 10:45 pmMr. Stephanopoulos is taking a narrow position on the issue of illegal immigrants using government services, something that everyone knows is occuring on a large scale. Just one example is the USDA WIC program running in each state. I recently confirmed from our state WIC director that they don’t verify legal immigration status before providing these benifits. Colorado alone has 116 offices, imagine the national costs and percentage of illegals using it.
In fact they run media campaigns in Spanish, you can make your own conclusions. Oh, and what about the huge Anchor Baby program? George and other mediagov’s like him are easy to dispute. Elected officials who do interviews need to be better prepared.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:58 pmFacts actually do not matter for the anti-immigrant racists. There are numerous already existing laws preventing undocumented immigrants and many legal immigrants to receive health care and other public benefits. Anti-immigrants are simply xenophobes and they do not care about the law. All they want is to stop all immigration. Good news is that these racists are in minority. Election of the current president is another proof that American people are sick and tired of all those anti-immigrants, racist, hicks, and backwoods.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:38 pm