At first glance, this shutdown feels like its predecessors, with each party blaming the other for what is or is not in the spending bill. The reason this shutdown uniquely grabbed my attention, beyond its record-setting length, was the form and the sheer amount of lying from politicians, pundits and internet denizens about the facts behind this bill and the programs it harms.
First, it is worth noting undocumented immigrants pay taxes. They also receive very few benefits – namely, education, emergency Medicaid, vaccinations and disaster relief – plus additional benefits that vary by state.
Although I believe undocumented immigrants deserve more, not because they pay taxes but rather because of their humanity, that’s not what I am discussing here. The argument I am making concerns many Republicans’ claims that the left’s desire to extend Affordable Care Act tax credits would “give illegal immigrants healthcare.”
Whether out of a genuine misunderstanding or not, individuals like Mike Johnson, J. D. Vance and Donald Trump made claims about undocumented immigrants getting free health care under the Democrats’ provision.
When pressed, officials have cited a letter from the Congressional Budget Office that says 1.2 million noncitizens will lose eligibility for these tax credits due to this bill: 900,000 by virtue of being a class of legal immigrant that is no longer eligible for the credits, and 300,000 as a result of a ban on certain green-card holders receiving any ACA coverage while in a Medicaid waiting period.
The main point of contention comes from the 900,000 figure. At times, articles summarizing the CBO letter used phrases such as “losing eligible legal status.” In this regard, they refer not to people losing their legal status, but rather to entire types of legal statuses losing eligibility for these subsidies.
According to the National Immigration Law Center, groups that lost eligibility for not just the ACA tax credits, but also SNAP, Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP benefits include refugees, asylum recipients and survivors of trafficking and domestic violence.
This brings me to another focal point of the right-wing disinformation campaign: SNAP, a program whose disbursements have so far been withheld this month.
If the right-wing internet campaign is anything to go by, not many people understand how SNAP works, much less know anyone who relies on it. This was evidenced by the storm of AI-generated videos depicting African American women screaming about how they needed their SNAP Electronic Benefits Transfers so they can buy food for their “seven kids from seven dads” or something equally racist.
Another set of arguments misinterpreted various graphs and statistics to conclude that most beneficiaries are immigrants, even though citizens make up the overwhelming majority of SNAP recipients.
The fact some of the core arguments against SNAP rely on especially gross messaging as well as misinformation about who receives benefits, how much they receive in benefits and how a majority of working-aged non-disabled recipients are employed, illustrates the issue with our discussion about these programs.
Many members of this right-wing echo chamber fall into one of two camps. The first camp consists of people, including certain politicians and corporate executives, divorced from the reality that low-income individuals face. They fail to understand no one chooses poverty, and no one should be ashamed of relying on programs like SNAP.
The second camp consists of working people who are barely ineligible for such programs, and have been convinced by the first camp that the solution is not to expand the criteria, but to further restrict who qualifies for our grossly inadequate social safety net. Most of the time, this message comes packaged with racialized subtones to promote a fictitious us vs. them mentality. However, this grotesque framing ignores the truth: that all people deserve access to healthcare and food.
Janagan Ramanathan is a Sartell High School alum, former U.S. Naval Academy midshipman and current aerospace engineering major at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
