A year ago, I was accepted into a buy-in Medicaid program for disabled working adults. The program allows disabled adults to work by providing us with in-home caretakers, the only insurance which provides such coverage. Unfortunately, no government-approved home-health agency would take my case because, inter alia, they were short-staffed. They simply couldn’t find Americans willing to work a low wage position that entails lifting and the intimacies of care-taking.
After I was out of recovery, she said, “Okay, we’re going out to dinner…my treat. If I’m going to tell you all my secrets, I need to do it over some food and alcohol!”There, she confessed how she found out, after thirty years of living in this country, that she was undocumented. Her mysterious appointments were with an immigration attorney to try to ascertain her status, only to find out that her green card expired long ago.
Trump’s hostility toward immigrants, even toward those who were brought here as children, not only shows how deeply our President lacks empathy, but it strikes fear into honest, law-abiding, loving, caregiving people, who dedicate their lives to helping the most helpless Americans in this country. Eliminating DACA and making our existing immigration laws even harsher not only harms immigrants who contribute to our society in a way our fellow Americans are unwilling to do, but injures those Americans, like myself, who rely on such selfless people. It leaves disabled Americans to search for an American who isn’t a criminal or opioid addict, and is willing to perform underpaid intimate manual labor.