(RepublicanNews.org) – President Biden is set to allow 100,000 people who immigrated to the U.S. as children to sign up for healthcare under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, in the run-up to this year’s presidential election. Enrollment for the ACA will open on November 1st, just days before voters cast their ballots for who should sit in the White House next year.
Previously, Biden had promised that the 100,000 eligible migrants would be able to sign up for Medicaid, which provides free healthcare coverage for the poorest people in the U.S., but he was unable to achieve this. The plan was first proposed in April 2023 and extensive delays have meant that eligible migrants were previously unable to sign up for ACA. This has resulted in many migrants going without healthcare as they could not afford it at standard market rates, according to Xavier Becerra, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. It is estimated that one-third of DACA immigrants do not currently have healthcare coverage.
The eligible migrants are those covered by former President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, an act designed to shield children brought to the U.S. illegally. DACA meant that as these children grew up, they would be legally permitted to work in the U.S., although such “dreamers” as they became known, still did not qualify as having a “lawful presence” in the country, and so could not apply for coverage under the ACA. Biden’s recent rule change specifically included an amendment to the definition of having a “lawful presence” in the U.S., which allows DACA migrants to qualify.
Since Obama’s executive order that brought DACA to life in 2012, over 832,000 immigrants have been helped by the program, many of whom have stayed in the US into adulthood and started their own families in America. It is estimated that 254,000 children born in the U.S. have a parent covered by the DACA rule.
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