Simon Ateba is Chief White House Correspondent for Today News Africa covering President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, U.S. government, UN, IMF, World Bank and other financial and international institutions in Washington and New York.
The U.S. Supreme immigration ruling on Monday sealed the fate of poor Africans who had hoped to live in the United States and achieve their American dream of going from grass to grace with a ruling that gave a go-ahead for one of President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies.
The ruling on Monday now allows the Trump administration to deny legal permanent residency to poor immigrants (Africans, black and brown people) who currently use or may need food or medical assistance in the United States.
The United States remains the richest and most powerful country on earth, and a big chunk of the food here is thrown away and waste.
The Supreme Court’s five conservatives justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, voted to grant the administration’s request to lift a lower court’s injunction that had blocked the public charge policy. They overpowered the four liberal justices who opposed it.
The policy has been a flashpoint between Republicans and Democrats and has been criticized by immigrant rights advocates as a “wealth test” that would disproportionately keep out non-white immigrants.
The four liberal justices said they would have denied the administration’s request to put the injunction on hold.
Chief justice Roberts sat as the presiding officer in Trump’s impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate when the action was announced.
It was a long battle that emanated from lower courts, when lawsuits aiming to block the policy were filed against the Trump administration by the states of New York, Connecticut and Vermont as well as by New York City and several nonprofit organizations.
In imposing an injunction blocking implementation of the rule,
The U.S. District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan on Oct. 11 called the policy “repugnant to the American Dream” and a “policy of exclusion in search of a justification”, and imposed an injunction blocking the implementation of the rule.
American newspapers recalled how “the administration had asked the high court to let the rule go into effect even before the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules on Trump’s appeal of Daniels’ injunction against the rule. The 2nd Circuit is considering the matter on an expedited basis, with legal papers to be submitted by Feb. 14 and arguments to be held soon afterward”.
