By the close of Washington’s legislative session last week, state lawmakers had added more funding to help reduce health care insurance costs for undocumented immigrants, as the state also prepares to expand Apple Health, its free or low-cost health insurance, to the same population in July.
This year, the Legislature added $28.4 million, nearly twice as much as its first allocation of such funding during the 2023 session, to continue helping the 16,000 individuals who applied for coverage during the recent enrollment period, which ended Jan. 15.
In May 2022, Washington was the first state to file a waiver application to allow undocumented immigrants to buy private health insurance; a year later, the waiver was approved by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of the Treasury.
The waiver meant undocumented immigrants could apply for Medicaid or shop for private health care insurance through Healthplanfinder, the website to apply for health care in Washington.
Mixed-status families, or families with different citizenship or immigration statuses, can also purchase private insurance coverage together.
I can see the reasoning for this. They are tax payers (most of the state budget comes from sales tax and even aside from that, most undocumented immigrants pay income tax) and as long as they are residents, I don’t see why they would not qualify. I also know that can certainly stress budgets. Unfortunately our immigration system means that many of these immigrants have no legal path to be here let alone getting citizenship. So I guess if you are against this, bitch to your representative with your dollars to get a non shitty immigration system.
And on the politics of immigration, I’ve found that most people are in agreement on the process. When you ask people who rant on and on about illegal immigrants what they think the immigration process should be, they largely want a similar process to people who would consider themselves more pro immigration. I recently talked about immigration with a relative recently and mentioned how their was essentially no process when our ancestors came over. She countered by mentioning that my great grandmother went through Ellis Island and eventually had to take a citizenship test. Many conflate immigration with citizenship which is a bit silly. I know several people who immigrated as children and only decided to spend the tens of thousands of dollars to go through citizenship after having lived here for a few decades. Have a conversation with a person who is against illegal immigration and ask how the process should be instead of throwing out talking points. You’ll find that many of them actually agree with you.
