Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) are introducing legislation that will codify into law a fortified “public charge” rule to prevent welfare-dependent legal immigrants from resettling in the United States.
The legislation known as the Public Charge Clarification Act of 2025, shared exclusively with Breitbart News, would put into law the Trump administration’s original public charge rule, which enforced inadmissibility statutes of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to ensure legal immigrants prove their ability to be self-sufficient before securing green cards.
The Biden administration, in 2022, watered down the rule by exempting the use of taxpayer-funded benefits from being considered when a legal immigrant is seeking to resettle in the U.S.
Nehls told Breitbart News the legislation is critical to ensure another administration cannot come along and strip the public charge rule of all enforcement mechanisms.
“The Biden Administration not only scrapped President Trump’s effective border security policies, which kept the American people safe from illegal aliens coming from all corners of the world, but also altered policies that safeguarded public benefits meant for American citizens, to allow for foreign nationals to drain these vital resources and encouraged dependency on these programs,” Nehls said.
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“It’s simple — if an alien will be a drain on critical resources that Americans fall back on during hard times, they shouldn’t be admissible,” Nehls continued. “I’m proud to introduce legislation that protects American taxpayers, discourages benefit-seeking immigration, and restores the fundamental requirement that those seeking the privilege of living in the United States must be able to support themselves.”
Specifically, the bill would require United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) adjudicators to consider any and all past and future taxpayer-funded benefits used by a legal immigrant and require such legal immigrants to have a financial sponsor with an income that prevents future use of public benefits.
“For too long, hardworking Americans have been left high and dry while Washington props up a broken immigration system that rewards dependence,” Marshall told Breitbart News.
The bill comes as President Donald Trump recently published welfare data for immigrant groups in the U.S. Shockingly, the data showed that the majority of several immigrant groups are on some form of welfare in the U.S.
In particular, more than 8-in-10 immigrants from Bhutan are on welfare, 75 percent from Yemen are on welfare, and about 72 percent from Somalia are on welfare.
“If we truly want to put America First, immigrants coming to our country should contribute — not rely on taxpayers,” Marshall said. “The Public Charge Clarification Act of 2025 does exactly that by reversing Biden’s disastrous policies and codifying the Department of Homeland Security’s commonsense 2018 proposed standard that puts American families first.”
The bill’s original co-sponsors include Reps. Barry Moore (R-AL), Glenn Grothman (R-WI), Chip Roy (R-TX), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Wesley Hunt (R-TX), Ronny Jackson (R-TX), Brandon Gill (R-TX), Mark Harris (R-NC), and Randy Weber (R-TX).
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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