Housing and Urban Services Secretary Scott Turner said a majority of illegal alien families in the United States rely on taxpayer-funded welfare programs, costing tens of billions of dollars each year and placing significant strain on housing, healthcare, education, and public safety systems.
Turner said roughly 59 percent of illegal alien families use at least one welfare program, at an estimated annual cost of $42 billion.
He argued those funds should instead be focused on helping American citizens achieve independence rather than long-term reliance on government assistance.
“That for you, 59% of illegal alien families use one or more welfare program in our country, costing about $42 billion a year,” Turner said.
“So if you think about almost 60% of illegal alien families using our welfare system, one or more of them costing about $42 billion a year, which should be prioritized to help the American people not to remain on subsidies, if you will, but to get a hand up and then to get off of government subsidies to live a life of self sustainability.”
Turner said the financial burden created by illegal immigration affects multiple sectors, including housing availability, affordability, medical services, corrections, and education.
He said the influx of individuals into the country increases demand on systems already under pressure.
And so you have housing, you have affordability, you have housing supply, you have medical you have the corrections, you have education,” Turner said.
“And so when you get all of these people coming into our country, it puts a strain on us.”
Turner credited President Donald Trump with restoring fiscal discipline and taking steps to secure the border, saying those actions are already producing positive results across the economy.
He said efforts under the Trump administration are focused on improving affordability and increasing housing supply while reducing the financial impact of illegal immigration.
“But thank God you know, under President Trump’s leadership, we’re getting our fiscal house back in order,” Turner said.
“The border is being secured. Affordability is coming around.”
Turner said he believes the effects of those policies will become more apparent in the coming year, leading to improvements in economic stability and public safety for Americans.
“And I believe that next year, because of the things that have happened thus far in President Trump’s leadership and in this administration, that next year, from a financial standpoint, from an economic standpoint, from a safety standpoint and more, that the American people will begin to thrive once again,” Turner said.
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SAVE Act explained: Republicans’ sweeping elections overhaul would impose strict new voting rules, potentially disenfranchising millions of voters
Only eight states currently require documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration
President Trump on Sunday said he would not sign any new legislation into law until Congress passes the SAVE Act, a Republican-led bill that would dramatically overhaul elections nationwide and potentially disenfranchise millions of voters.
“It must be done immediately,” he wrote on Truth Social. “It supersedes everything else. MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE.”
The legislation, which Trump has urged Congress to pass for years, was approved by the House of Representatives in a near party-line vote last month, but it has stalled in the Senate. Democrats have vowed to block it from moving forward, and Republican leaders in the chamber have so far balked at calls to change procedural rules to get around a Democratic filibuster.
In his post on Sunday, Trump also demanded that additional provisions be added to the bill, including a near-total ban on mail-in voting, new restrictions on medical care for transgender minors and a ban on transgender participation in sports.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Tuesday that he plans to bring the bill, without any of Trump’s requested additions, up for a vote next week. He conceded that the vote is likely to fail if Democrats continue to oppose it.
“It’s about the math,” he said. “For better or worse, I’m the one who has to be the clear-eyed realist about what we can achieve here.”
Trump and a number of other GOP members of Congress have called on Republicans in the Senate to use a procedural tactic known as a “talking filibuster” to get around Democrats’ opposition. But Thune said Tuesday that option isn’t on the table right now.
Republicans say the election elements of the bill are needed to defend American democracy, often echoing Trump’s false claims about “stolen” elections.
“It’s essential to maintaining our constitutional republic, and everybody in this country seems to understand and agree to that,” GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson said after last month’s vote.
Democrats argue that the bill is purely designed to make it harder for voters, particularly those who tend to vote against Republicans, to cast their ballots.
“The SAVE Act is not an election security bill — it is a voter suppression bill, full stop,” the Congressional Black Caucus, a group whose members are all Democrats, said in a statement.
On Monday evening, Trump told a room full of Republican lawmakers that passing the SAVE Act would “guarantee” a GOP victory in November’s midterms, adding that the party would face “big trouble” without it.
What would the SAVE Act do?
Right now, rules around voter registration, the types of ID people need to show when they go to the polls and things like mail-in voting vary dramatically from state to state. The SAVE Act, which is officially named the SAVE America Act, comes well short of Trump’s ambition to “nationalize” American elections, but it would impose strict new rules for the whole country. These are some of its most important provisions:
Proof of citizenship for voter registration: The SAVE Act would require anyone registering to vote anywhere in the U.S. to show “documentary proof of United States citizenship.” Under the provisions in the bill, things like a driver’s license, Real ID or Social Security number would not be enough. Prospective voters would need to provide a valid U.S. passport, military ID, tribal ID or birth certificate.
These requirements would apply to new voters and to anyone who was re-registering, either because they moved to a new state or changed their name. It would create additional hurdles for women who take their partner’s name after getting married, who would need to provide extra documentation to explain why their current name doesn’t match what’s listed on their birth certificate or passport.
Only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote in most U.S. elections. States already require voters to certify, under the threat of legal penalties, that they are citizens when they register. States also audit their voter rolls regularly to purge the names of anyone who should not be listed. Though Trump and many Republicans have claimed that noncitizen voting is rampant in American elections, researchers have found a “shockingly small number” of actual documented incidents — far too few to impact the outcome of even small local elections.
Only eight states currently require documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration. Expanding these standards nationwide would prevent 21 million eligible voters from being able to vote, according to an estimate by the Brennan Center for Justice. Only half of all Americans have a passport. Millions more either don’t have or can’t readily access their birth certificates.
Nationwide voter ID: The SAVE Act would require all voters to present a valid photo ID when they cast their ballots. Though a majority of states have some sort of voter ID law in place already, most of those laws are far less stringent than the standard the SAVE Act would create. For example, a number of states accept non-photo IDs or have procedures that allow voters without ID to still cast their ballots. Only 10 states currently have the kind of strict voter ID laws in place that the SAVE Act would impose on the whole country.
Though a strong majority of Americans support voter ID laws, many experts say the rules do little to prevent fraud and instead disenfranchise otherwise eligible voters. Like non-citizen voting, cases of voter impersonation are exceedingly rare. There have been just 34 documented cases of someone falsifying their identity at the polls out of the billions of individual votes cast in the United States over the past 40-plus years, according to a database compiled by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.
Research on how many people voter ID laws prevent from voting is mixed, but most studies have found that it does have at least some impact on turnout. Elderly voters and people of color are disproportionately likely to lack the kind of photo ID they’d need to cast their ballots under the standards the SAVE Act would create.
New limits on mail-in voting: The SAVE Act would not override state mail-in voting rules — or fulfill Trump’s wish to ban the practice altogether. But it would make voting by mail harder. That’s because the new proof of citizenship rules would also apply to voters who register to vote by mail. Anyone registering for an absentee ballot, with some limited exceptions, would still have to go in person to a local elections office to present their passport or birth certificate for their registration to be valid.
Other provisions: The SAVE Act would also impose strict new requirements for how often and how thoroughly states would be required to audit their voter rolls for noncitizens, create criminal penalties for elections officials who allow someone who fails to show proof of citizenship to register and give regular citizens the power to sue elections officials who they believe violated the provisions of the law.
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We Must Invest in Civics for America’s 250th
The second week of March is Civic Learning Week. It’s an annual observance marked by civics advocates with webinars, social media campaigns, and a big conference known as the National Forum, organized by the nonprofit iCivics. This year’s National Forum will take place in Philadelphia, as more than 600 civics leaders, educators, and students will gather to consider the theme of “Liberty and Learning: Civic Education at 250.”
Indeed, this year’s Civic Learning Week is an even bigger deal than usual, as we celebrate the nation’s quarter-millennium anniversary. Civics should be the top item on our national agenda.
Civic education should matter to every American. It is more than a set of facts that eighth graders should know for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (only 22 percent of eighth graders were proficient in civics, and 13 percent were proficient in history in the most recent scoring). Rather, civic education is best understood as a lifelong commitment to the study and practice of America’s distinctive political tradition of self-government.
For all that should give us reason for worry in our country, the good news is that momentum is quickly growing in the movement for what the Princeton-based Institute for Citizens and Scholars calls “civic preparedness.” At all levels of education, institutions and philanthropists are partnering to support a renewed focus on civics.
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