“Public charge” refers to a determination by the U.S. government that an immigrant applicant for a green card would not be likely to need to rely on government support. Under current regulations, people are judged to be public charges if they would require federal cash assistance or would require institutionalized long-term care. The Trump administration is proposing to wipe out those rules and instead seek to disqualify green card applicants based on an unspecified, much broader list of government services used, either by themselves or by family members.

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CHN submitted our on December 19, 2025. You can view the comment here.

I strongly support the current public charge regulations and oppose any change. I do so both because keeping the current rule protects lives and because it greatly adds to the strength of our economy and our country.

My father and his parents came to this country fleeing Hitler’s Germany arriving January 1, 1940.

They only were able to leave Germany and enter the US because a Canadian relative, who had become Episcopalian and never told his wife that he was originally Jewish, provided enough money to satisfy the public charge rule on the condition that they never contact him again lest this connection reveal the relative’s Jewish heritage. Without that relative, they would have been unable to leave Germany and would have died in the concentration camps.

On paper my grandparents looked like they would not be self-supporting. They had no college degrees and limited English. In Germany they ran a home for disabled children —something that would be hard to do in this country without English. My father was about to turn 15 and also had very limited English. They could not bring much money with them because of German rules. Under a revised public charge rule such as the one this administration is considering they likely would have been turned away— perhaps even after the relative provided the funds.

That would have resulted in their deaths and a great loss for the United States.

My grandparents and my father contributed enormously to this country. Within a year or two my grandparents were serving as house parents in a juvenile justice facility in New York. By 1946 my grandparents were running an orphanage in Minnesota. Later they ran a home for senior citizens in California. After their first few months here they were entirely self-supporting.

My father went to farm school as a teenager and worked for a year on farms (desperately needed in the war). Then he volunteered for the army and when given the choice of the European or Pacific theater he chose to fight in Europe, knowing that if he was captured the Germans would treat him terribly since he was Jewish. In the war he set up new governments in German towns, and then was an interpreter for the International War Crimes Commission. Then he served as an interpreter in the Dachau war crimes trials.

When he was demobilized my father got a college degree and PhD in Botany. He conducted some of the first research on the effects on plants of the kind of radiation from the atom bomb. He taught botany at the University of Montana and University of Massachusetts for nearly 40 years, serving as chair of the Botany Department for five years. He chose to teach at public universities because he wanted to teach first generation college students. He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, the world’s oldest biological society, in 1983.

He served in the town meeting for 45 years, as well as on the town conservation commission. He helped found the town Jewish Community and the town NAACP.

While I am deeply proud of my father and grandparents they are far from unique. Today’s prospective immigrants can contribute as much to our country. They come here to build productive lives and create a better future for their children. If they need a little help when they first arrive we should be happy to provide it; those funds will be paid back over and over in taxes and in service to our country. We should be welcoming them in, and not creating barriers.