paul shankman discusses recent shakeups in the u.s. intelligence community. be sure to watch c-span's washington journal, live at 7:00 eastern, friday morning, join the discussion. we welcome alex back to our desk. he joins us to discuss a new trump administration role -- cruel. i want to start with ken cuccinelli, announcing the so-called public charge rule earlier this week. through the public charge rule be trump administration is ofnforcing the ideals

self-sufficiency and personal responsibility and making sure immigrants can't support themselves and become -- can't support themselves and become successful in america. our rule events aliens who will likely to become a public charge from coming to the united states or remaining here and getting a green card. public charge is now defined in a way that make sure the law is meaningfully enforced and that those who are subject to it are self-sufficient. explainex nowrasteh, public charge and how the rules is interpreted in the past of what the changes are? guest: the idea immigrants who come here should be able to sustain themselves, support themselves financially, either through their own hard work or through support of family members but not through the support of the federal government or state and local governments. the origin or the rule -- of the role was in the 16 40's in

massachusetts, and inherited law in england but they did not apply to foreigners but nativeborn british subjects and if you went to another county and seen as being a public charge, they could move you back to the county where you came from and i can a public charge or a dependent on these programs -- inyou were in and all a government supplied institution where they pay for all of your food and basically supported to entirely. that was the definition. the 1880's and in 1882 congress passed the immigration act of 1882 and that said that those likely to be a public charge are not allowed to enter into the united states, meaning that if they were live in an arms house, the entirely of the welfare state, they would be a public charge depending on services and would not be allowed to come but in 1881 the government passed a law that says if you immigrate

to the united states and you become dependent with any first year of being here they can deport you from the country. the first time it was used in deportation. 1999, the government created a rule at that time that set what it needs to be a public charge is a majority of your money income comes from the government. a majority of it. the current rule now states that, if you are likely to use a government benefit in the future, nonmonetary or monetary, medicaid, food stamps, cash benefit, if you are likely to use one of those benefits for 12 months in a 36 month window in the future according to a formula -- a non-formula, a list of standards by a black box then the government will deny you a green card on that charge. host: who gets to determine likelihood? guest: there are numerous

characteristics that deregulation puts in place to determine this. age, health, assets, how you have used benefits in the past. they did not create a formula. they did not wake the different categories typically and who guess to decide it are government employees and the department of homeland security and the department of justice and the department of state. department of homeland security for those already in the united states on another visa and seeking to adjust their status to a green card or another visa. ,f you disagree as an applicant you can soothe them because you are in the united states and if you're oversea seeking a green card you will deal with the department of state and if they turn you down you are out of luck. there is no legal recourse. host: more from ken to tonelli more on the rule.che

>> public charge as an individual who receives one or more public benefits for more than 12 months in the aggregate within any 36 month period. receipt of two different benefits and one month counts as two months. prospectiverge is and looks at whether an individual is likely at any aint in the future to become public charge as we define it in the regulation. public benefits are defined as federal, state, and local, and tribal cash assistance, income maintenance, and a small list of non-cash benefits. some examples of the public benefits that are part of the rule are general assistance, ssi, snap, most forms of medicaid, and certain subsidized housing programs. the rule does not consider many

forms of government assistance that protect children and pregnant women's health as public benefits. generally this includes emergency medical assistance, disaster relief, national school chip,programs, ship -- medicaid for people under 21, or pregnant women, as well as foster care and adoption subsidies, student and mortgage loans, energy assistance, food pantries, homeless shelters, and head start. host: from the white house on monday. alex nowrasteh, how does this change the face of immigration in the future? guest: not clear how this will affect it because there is no actual formula or waiting theme in the regulation that government employees have to follow and we can only presume, based on the intent of the administration and how this rule is more strict, more people will

be denied green cars going forward. to give you an example for -- or historical context, between 2000 and last year 1% -- likelihoody high that this will increase going forward. host: the public charge rule that was announced this week, you have probably seen it in the news, our topic for the next half hour on "washington journal." alex nowrasteh is our guest. 1 if you are republican. 202-748-8000, if you're a democrat. an independents call 202-748-8002. illegal immigrants call 202-748-8003. alex nowrasteh, as folks are calling in, you talk about how much welfare and public

assistance american citizens use versus noncitizens and what the costs are. guest: another area of the law that is important is most new immigrants to the u.s. do not have access to welfare programs immediately when they get here with some exceptions like refugees. a result of this and the fact immigrants have a higher labor force participation rate and other reasons, immigrants are less likely to use welfare programs than nativeborn americans and when they do it is usually at a lower dollar value. a per capita consumption of welfare programs by individual immigrants compared to individual natives who are -- foreign-born immigrants use about 39% less welfare, including the entitlement program, social security and medicare, the largest portions of the welfare state, and the means -- and medicaid for those in poverty. host: the difference between illegal immigrant you sent those

to go through the legal system? guest: and the united states on a legal visa or have a green card now and on a legal visa, you are generally not allowed to use most welfare programs for the first five years you are here but some states can create different rules and some states allow legally present immigrants who are on a green card to get medicaid earlier than other states. the difference is that states have to pay for the difference in money themselves because these programs are funded by a combination of state and federal government. to expandte wants these programs for immigrants in the state not eligible under federal rules, they have to pay the difference. host: how do they do that -- how many states do that? ,uest: 15-20 have earlier depending on the welfare, some medicaid earlier and some -- host: that is for legal immigrants? guest: yes. illegal immigrants usually have

no access to welfare benefits but a recent change in california is the expanded medicaid to some illegal immigrants who qualified and the state of california has to pay for the benefit. illegal immigrants have access to wics, some emergency medicaid, and other support. generally it is a small fraction of all welfare state spending in the united states. host: let's talk to callers. jerry in new jersey you are a first. -- you are up first. caller: i have two questions. one, i heard democrats over and over on c-span say that the illegals do not get welfare and benefits. evidently that was not correct. it seven -- it sounds like trump a merit-basedo system which is been talking about for a couple of years. people, are these

illegals, supposedly paying taxes if they cannot get a security number? how is this working? this is such a fraud. how are they paying taxes? where are they getting social security numbers? guest: great question. generally democrats who say that about welfare and illegal immigrants, true but some small exceptions but true some illegal immigrants have some small access to welfare programs. it is important to understand that the rule put in place is not about stopping welfare in the united states by immigrants but about reducing the number of cards,who can get green but reducing the number of people who can immigrate to the united states based on the judgment cards, but reducing the number of of a mostly

non-reviewable judgment by a government bureaucrat. host: legal immigration number four year in the u.s. -- per year in the u.s.? guest: about a million people a , morenter on a green card than half have already been here on another visa, less than half have come from abroad. host: ties that a consistent from the obama administration through the trumpet nutrition? guest: it has been -- trump administration? guest: it has been consistent since the 2000's because of statutory design and partly because of chance because a large portion of the immigrants who come into the estates of green cards are three non-cap and immediate relatives category, spouses and young children. in terms of the taxes that you legal immigrants pay, --illegal immigrants pay, between 55% and 75% of illegals immigrants have pay deducted from their paychecks and there are ways to

do this, one is by using a stolen social security number, and the other way is by an identity loan which is where an individual will let another -- immigrant use their legal identity for work purposes. often time somebody will retire and give a nephew or friend their social security number and set use this at work. generally, that is how it is done. host: does the money still going to the system for stolen so security numbers? guest: yes, money paid into the system but the illegal immigrants who are doing the work do not have access to the benefits. if they're using somebody else's social security number, that person will eventually have access to the benefits but there are other issues with fraud and stolen social security numbers, prevalent taxes, it is not a victimless crime to do that but

made necessary unfortunately for a lot of people because of the i-9 restrictions that prevent the hiring of illegal immigrants which is a government form, when we get a job we shall government id and fill out a form that says where legally allowed to work in the united states and that creates an incentive for illegal immigrants to steal somebody's id for employment purposes. when the laws were put in place there was not that much identity theft that there is now more because illegal immigrants are incentivized to do that because they need the identity to work. is next in ohio, republican, good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: somebody i know moved to ecuador and when they moved there they had to get an fbi check, police check, fingerprints, they had to provide all kinds of papers and they had to prove that they

could take care of themselves. over there you are entitled to zero. you get nothing. these people come to this country with a shirt on the back and expect the american taxpayer to take care of them and the family and the so-called unaccompanied children. this country is a debtor nation at when they called in our debt, we are bankrupt, the people on welfare here, better wake up. guest: the welfare state is a problem. the way to deal with this is not through a public charge rule that is designed to limit legal immigration but instead by building a wall around the welfare state, not around the country, a large report we did about how to do this in the united states and lawful immigrants in the united states have to show, they have to submit police records and security records. the caller makes a very good point and that is that the united states fiscal problems

are very bad but they are not going to be solved by tinkering with immigration on the edges, they will be resolved by getting the fiscal house in order. host: mark krikorian will be on next to talk about e-verify and he was quoted in the washington times today about the public charge rule change, this is what he had to say. this rule is taking a principle that immigrants should be able to pay their own bills and translating it into the modern conditions of the welfare state, we should have done this before and it brings a basic difference of perspective about immigration policy, the purpose of immigration policy to benefit americans already here or is it to benefit the immigrants coming here? guest: that would make sense if there was a value determination to the welfare benefits that these folks are receiving. at --le as it stands and it will be put in place is not the value of the benefits you use but whether you are in a program or not. if you can about the fiscal impact and economic impact of these folks and what they could have, there would be a value

determination, how much welfare are they using? if you had 97% of your income that is coming from your own work at 3% from a welfare program, it doesn't matter if it is 3% or 70% as long as you use one program. that is a big problem. the value of welfare benefits is more important than whether you are using a program or not. i want to reduce all of it. host: judy in delaware, democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. can you hear me? host: yes. caller: i would like to clear up what the definition of illegal immigrant is. most people get the image that an illegal immigrant is coming from one specific area, more than likely south america or mexico. would you expound on the fact that there were other illegal aliens coming from europe and other places? guest: yes, thank you.

the majority of illegal immigrants presently in the united states are from mexico and central america. mexicans for the first time dropped below a majority of those who are not legally present in the united states, central american numbers are going up and caribbean numbers, but there are several hundred thousand from south america, from africa, europe, and asia, as well in the united states. somebodymmigrant is who is not lawfully present in the united states or they overstayed their visa or entered illegally and they can be removed and imported once they come in contact with immigrations and custom enforcement in the united states . a lot of people do not know their immigration status because the laws are second and complexity only to the income tax. it is a simple definition at least on paper. host: janet is a legal immigrant in tucson, arizona. caller: good morning. my question is, how does this

new public charge rule affect legal residents wanting to become u.s. citizens? how will the public charge rule affect them? i also wanted to clarify that legal immigrants can be issued a tax id number to the irs so they do pay taxes. my question really is about the citizenship situation. host: where did you immigrate from and what has been a process for you? caller: i came from columbia at six years old, we came here legally and we had green cards and i was not even aware of the immigration issue until i moved from florida to arizona. in my line of work i deal with a lot of legal immigrants who have tax id numbers. based on the most recent changes

with the tax law, these people do not even get the child tax credit or additional child tax credit as they used to get before and they are now paying significant amount of money into the system by not receiving any of the credits that legal immigrants are u.s. citizens. there is a huge misconception about that. --t: are you in the task tax-preparation business? caller: yes and a paralegal. i deal with a lot of small businesses. food vendors. people that clean houses for a living and they have tax id numbers and they pay the taxes. thank you for adding that about tax id numbers. the other side of the taxes you is you cannot avoid paying excise taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, all of these other taxes that fill the coffers of state and local governments. thank you for adding that. ,hen it comes to naturalization

the public charge rule will not affect whether you decide to become a citizen or not but it will affect whether you decide to get another visa or a green card, which is the first step to eventually naturalizing. host: jesse in new albany, indiana come independent. independent. caller: i am glad she called from arizona and shine light on the tax id number. there is so many workarounds and when the cato institute or think tanks come up with these numbers that illegals are paying their fair share of taxes and are not on welfare illegally, but they have no idea, that is a falsity as it is hard to track something that is not being tracked. in other words, nobody is really looking at the underground economy that exists in these communities.

i live in a rule area, i am right outside of louisville. have appens is that you community of illegals and they work within that community, some goats, raise chickens, that type of thing. it is all done outside of the usda and it is all done without paying taxes. we do not see any of that revenue and that is not counted. host: that is jesse in new albany. this is the report from the cato institute come immigration and the welfare state from may of 2018, one of the authors ours you -- is you. issue of welfare use, we lose -- we use government debt and did not create any data, we looked at

the individual use by foreign status of the government's data and i think you raise a good point, which is, a lot of immigration, a quarter of immigration in the united states are not legally present and ,llegal immigrants, as a result it is difficult to understand what they are doing for the same reason you said, they do not want to be found and surveyed. that is a problem with any black market in the united states and the solution is to legalize that black-market. we have other indications, we do have excised taxes, a lot of them pay property taxes, all of the other taxes that are not tied to your individual identity whenever youou pay go to the store and buy something or whenever your property assessor comes by or whenever you have to pay property taxes in your state. it is virtually impossible to avoid a large number of those taxes. we have a pretty good indication of this and the amount. these are just estimates, i would love to have perfect

numbers but we do not have that for anybody. host: where'd you get the numbers from, what agency? guest: a lot from the u.s. that is aother survey supplemental income and program participation survey that comes up every four years in ways, 2015 number seven been released. that is another source of information. host: speaking of black markets, are there other black-market should be legalized? guest: immigration is my specialty but generally i think legalizing drugs, moving that black-market, moving a lot of rules when it comes to black market firearm ownership and making it easier for people to legally owned firearms in the united states. ways to reduce radically the size of black market, especially drugs, and my colleague wrote a report about how marijuana

legalization in a handful of american states has collapsed marijuana smuggling across southwest border. it has decimated it. >> washington journal mugs are available on c-span's new store. see all of the c-span products. president trump is headed to speak at a campaign rally in manchester, new hampshire. will have that live in about 15 minutes. here's a look at remarks he made to reporters as he left new jersey for new hampshire. [inaudible]