The NPR Politics Podcast - How The "BIg, Beautiful Bill" Would Change Immigration Policy

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

From allocating more money to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico, to changing provisions on what public services legal immigrants can use, the budget reconciliation bill working its way through Congress would change federal immigration policy in a number of ways. We take a look. This podcast: White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, immigration policy reporter Ximena Bustillo, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, this is Abel. And this is Eleanor. We're about to head to a meadow nestled in the foothills of the Austrian Alps for our elopement after eight years together. This podcast was recorded at 1 0 6 p.m. on Tuesday, May 27th, 2025. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. But we'll finally be married and exploring central Europe on our month long honeymoon.

Congratulations. Here's the show. That sounds amazing. Mazel tov. Very nice. Month long honeymoon. Can I come? Hey there.

It's the NPR politics podcast. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Pimena Bustio and I cover immigration policy. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And today on the show, we're going to take a look at what the current reconciliation bill that's working its way through Congress would change for legal immigrants. Now Ximena, you are our expert on this.

I want to kind of start broadly here. What are the changes that are proposed in this bill, which by the way has already passed in the House? So there's kind of three buckets of immigration-related provisions. The first is that traditional border security money and spending that we've heard a lot about, that we've heard the Trump administration say that they really need, that addresses some of the logistical, practical barriers that they're facing to speeding up arrests and deportations,

things like detention space, more resources and infrastructure along the border. They're asking for about $45 billion specifically for border wall infrastructure and construction, funding for more employees, kind of things like that. The second bucket is out of house judiciary, and that is targeting so-called fees and price tags on applying for things like asylum, work permits, different types of statuses like parole, and even penalties if you are apprehended at the border. And so there are already some fees associated with some of these items. On others, there's not, for example, asylum. Currently, it doesn't cost anything to apply for asylum.

This bill would raise that to $1,000. So there's substantial increases in creation of money to find legal pathways to migration. And then the third bucket is really tackling the impact of public benefits on different groups of, again, legal immigrants. So thinking refugees, asylees, parolees, and different folks with variant legal status to be in the US, and whether or not they have access to things like legal status to be in the US, and whether or not they have access to things like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, Medicaid, Medicare, federal student loans, this bill would actually remove access to a lot of these public benefits for

those legal groups that I just mentioned, which would be new. And let's just be clear, we're talking about, again, legal immigrants. So who exactly is this impacting? Which groups of people? Right. So the main targets are those who are here on refugee status, those who are here seeking asylum, those who are here on some sort of temporary protected status or parole. These are all folks that to very different degrees do have access to public benefits.

Oftentimes they have to wait five years before they get access. So it's not like they arrive to the US and automatically are able to access these social safety net programs. But House Republicans are looking to strip access and make only green card holders and citizens eligible. You know, you hear from the administration a lot, Hemenna, about undocumented immigrants getting all these public benefits. Is that true?

You know, it's not. So there's a lot of conversation about the so-called fraud in these public benefits, such as SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. But those who are without legal status cannot apply for these benefits. They can apply on behalf of their US citizen children. But I will note that this House version of the bill does not do anything to address, you know, mixed status households where there might be someone without legal status applying on behalf of their US citizen child.

By and large, a lot of immigrant rights groups say that even participation for legal immigrants in these programs is really low, just simply because there's a lot of fear of making it seem like you're taking advantage of public services, like you are a weight on society, that this might negatively impact your ability to seek further status such as if you're going from a refugee to being a green card holder, a green card holder to being a citizen. So already participation is really low amongst the legal groups of folks who have a right and have access to these programs.

You know, Mara, we talk a lot or we hear a lot from the Trump administration about, you know, exactly what you had just mentioned that people who are coming here illegally are the ones who are taking advantage of these systems. You hear a lot of Republicans talking about how they're supportive of immigration, but they want people to come here the right way. But here you have the Trump administration taking away benefits and going after people who are here legally already. What is your read on this?

What is the justification for doing something like that? Well, I think the justification is that the overall policy goal of the Trump administration is to discourage as many people as possible from immigrating to the United States under any program. And you see them going after green card holders who are students. So this is just generally trying to discourage immigration. There are some classes of immigrants

that the president wants to come here, and we can talk about that a little later, But I think that's the whole goal here. And there has been a lot of talk about looking for savings from, you know, waste, fraud and abuse in this bill. Right. But like, how much would these cuts save the U.S. government? The Congressional Budget Office, which is a nonpartisan group that analyzes policies for lawmakers gave a report to the Senate Agriculture Committee, that's the committee that created the portion related to SNAP, about what this bill would do for SNAP benefits. The CBO says that if this bill were to be enacted into law somewhere between 120,000 and 250,000, and 250,000 people

would lose access to that benefit. But it would only save $4 billion in the course of the next 10 years, which is not a lot when you think about how huge of a program SNAP is. I mean, it is, over the course of 10 years, hundreds of billions of dollars. And so those savings are really marginal.

And I spoke with folks who work on a little bit more of the conservative side of immigration. And they said that the dollar saving and the people affected, it's really, really small. But it is a part of this broader Trump agenda to maybe encourage people to leave, encourage that idea of making life a little bit more unlivable or putting up more guardrails so that it can be a bit scarier for immigrant families to pursue these options even if they have the right to. Okay, we're gonna take a break and we'll be back in a moment.

And we're back. And Jimena, I mean, at the same time that the administration is cutting down on programs for legal immigrants, cutting down on opportunities for, you know, new immigrants, refugees to come into this country. There are groups of people that the Trump administration is welcoming. Talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah. So, you know, we saw earlier this month, the arrival of 59 white South Africans coming in purportedly

under a so-called refugee status. They're in the process of being resettled into the United States. And the Trump administration says that more folks of this category, so white South Africans, are going to be coming to the United States in the coming months. And one of the things that leaders in the State Department have said is that they're really looking for folks that can easily assimilate into the country and do not pose national security threats while they're skirting questions about various other groups from war-torn countries or those who assisted US armed forces in Afghanistan that

had permissions, had gone through the processes to be resettled in the United States and are currently not able to do so while the broader refugee program is on pause. So that's kind of one set. And then the second set is kind of looking, when you look at these fees that house lawmakers want to input, you see like a broader conversation about, you know, who might be able to afford these processes in the future, what are they signaling that they want, you know, to bring into the United States. And it's people who can probably afford to pay these fees, you know, directly. Probably also, you know, we've seen a conversation about investor visas and, you

know, having someone come in and pay, you know, a few million dollars to qualify for a green card and additional avenues that also really change the profile of, you know, what we currently think of as someone immigrating to the United States through these various legal forms. And the process, too, for the white South African farmers that I found really stunning was the timeline of it. I mean, it was February when President Trump signed an executive order saying that he was going to start letting in this group that he says is experiencing a genocide in South

Africa. That is factually not true. But it was just back in February that he said these people were going to be allowed in as refugees. Three months later, they're coming into the country. That is record time when you compare it to other refugee wait times and asylum seeker wait times for other groups, right? Yes.

I mean, every step of this process is completely different than what refugees have traditionally needed to follow to enter the United States. Even just starting with that significantly expedited timeline, it can take months, if not years, to be fully vetted to be accepted to come to the United States. Various examinations from medical exams to background checks with DHS, with the State Department that just take a really long time. They were brought to the US on a chartered government flight. They were greeted at the airport by government officials.

Really, this big welcoming ceremony, and even the pockets of money that are being funneled to pay for this program is different than the traditional resettlement funding. And so, you know, we really are seeing the United States make a concerted effort to facilitate this process for this group. So Mara, there's a program that the Trump administration is also championing called the Gold Card Residency Permit, which requires, as you can imagine, a lot of cash money. What is

that program and who's allowed to use it? Right the Trump Gold Card is basically an investor visa program. We have very few official details about this program but what we do know from reporting from CNN and Axios is that the Trump Gold Card would cost five million dollars. It would give an expedited path to a green card and it would replace an existing immigrant investment program called EB-5, which costs much less money to buy. It might or might not be constitutional, since the Constitution gives Congress the sole power over deciding immigration rules like this. And the other thing it has that's very similar to other Trump programs

is fantastical claims about what it would do for the US budget. Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, has basically said it would solve the entire deficit. It would bring in trillions and trillions of dollars. So we don't know if that actually would happen. We don't know if this is constitutional. But we do know that Donald Trump thinks it would be a great thing for foreigners who have tremendous amounts of money to buy one of these Trump gold cards. Hemenna, one thing I wanted to ask you as well before we wrap up here, obviously, still a long ways to go before this bill becomes a law. It's going through debate in the Senate right now. I'm curious as it goes through the second iteration, what are watching for. Yeah, you know again kind of pivoting to the

very start of this conversation we talked about those three buckets you know traditional border security spending and then you had the increase in asylum fees on individual people and then the cut of benefits to legal immigrants and you know I think that it's clear that the spending part of this is going to raise more eyebrows probably in the Senate than a lot of these other provisions because, you know, this is a budget bill, it's a spending bill. They don't want to be spending more than they really need to. And we've already seen some Republicans really question DHS officials, you know, during hearings

about whether or not $46 billion is actually really needed for a border wall and really questioning the final price tag that the administration is asking for that the House has provided. We know the Senate's gonna do what Senate's gonna do, but when it comes to some of these smaller provisions such as cutting refugees and asylees, you know, parolees and certain DACA recipients from some of these benefits, you know, that's not necessarily where the broader political fight is in the chamber. You know, there's a broader conversation, sure, about SNAP and Medicaid work requirements

and, you know, broader expansion that I'm not really seeing a big conversation about access for legal immigrant groups. And so it is possible that, you know, these provisions stay as they are while the bigger fights happen. But you never know. Congress has many mysterious ways of getting a bill to a president's desk. And in a very short timeline, I might add, the goal is to do this pretty quickly. All right, we're going to leave it there for today.

I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Hima Nibustia and I cover immigration policy. And I'm Mara Eliason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.