New York Republicans in the US House of Representatives are asking Gov. Kathy Hochul to veto a bill providing federal health care benefits for illegal immigrants after the state Senate approved the measure.
“Instead of calling on the Biden Administration to close the borders, New York is working to further incentivize illegal immigration,” Rep. Anthony D’Esposito and five other New York representatives wrote in a Thursday letter.
“The New York Senate recently passed legislation that would allow the NYS Commissioner of Health to expand health care coverage subsidized by federal taxpayer dollars to illegal immigrants.”
The House GOP lawmakers called the move to use taxpayers’ money to subsidize the health care “unacceptable” and said it would “exacerbate” an already “out-of-control border crisis,” which has seen some migrants housed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in the Empire State.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has also floated the idea of paying residents to host other migrants in their homes.
“Instead of rewarding illegal immigrants for cutting the line, we should be focusing on securing our borders and finding ways to lower health care costs for millions of legal residents across the state, both at the federal and state level,” said the New York GOP lawmakers, who included Reps. Nick Langworthy, Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota, Andrew Garbarino and Claudia Tenney.
The bill makes use of federal waivers that would provide funding for roughly five years to migrants starting in 2024, according to a June 6 letter that one of the bill’s sponsors received from Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the administrator for US Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Hochul told reporters in Albany on Tuesday that she had concerns about the long-term fiscal effects of providing subsidized health care to illegal immigrants, despite the funding available from the federal government.
“I’m going to look at that proposal. And I’ve received a letter. I also want to let people know that there’s about $2.2 billion in that fund, which will be gone in a very short time, and costs-through to the state for the implementation of that would be, in the first few years, $6 billion, upwards of $13 billion,” she said.
“If the federal government wishes to give us more to complement that supplement that gives us $13 billion, that makes it a lot easier on the state. But I have to look at everything holistically, and the impact on our state finances, before I make a decision.”
Hochul has largely deferred responsibility for the migrant crisis, saying Tuesday that Adams would decide ultimately where asylum seekers should go upstate.
“I’m leading in a way that a governor is supposed to lead, that is to survey all land available that I have control over — SUNY campuses, psychiatric centers, former prisons — and make that available to the mayor,” she also told reporters in Albany.
The controversial migrant health care bill passed the New York Senate 41-21 last week and may soon proceed to the legislature’s lower chamber, where Assemblywoman Jessica González-Rojas (D-Queens) has introduced companion legislation.
State Senate Health Committee Chair Gustavo Rivera (D-Bronx), who sponsored the bill, said last Thursday that New York was “already spending over a billion dollars without giving any type of regular care” to the migrants, adding that his measure would “not cost the state anything.”
Rivera also said the burden on federal taxpayers would be at least $1 billion annually to provide care to roughly 240,000 migrants, but said he received assurance from state Health Commissioner James McDonald that New York would not enroll more migrants than can be accommodated.
New York state Sen. Steven Rhoads (R-Nassau) and other Republicans dissented from the floor of the upper chamber and voted against the bill.
“The fact that the money’s coming from the federal government doesn’t mean that it’s not coming out of taxpayer money, because the federal government gets their money from the same place,” he said.
The bill comes as Washington state and Colorado have expanded health care provisions for migrants with the use of federal waivers — a move Hochul pledged last year but left out of the fiscal year 2023 state budget.
