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Full-Text Articles in Law

Laboratories Of Exclusion: Medicaid, Federalism & Immigrants, Medha D. Makhlouf Dec 2020

Laboratories Of Exclusion: Medicaid, Federalism & Immigrants, Medha D. Makhlouf

Faculty Scholarly Works

Medicaid’s cooperative federalism structure gives states significant discretion to include or exclude various categories of immigrants. This has created extreme geographic variability in immigrants’ access to health coverage. This Article describes federalism’s role in influencing state policies on immigrant eligibility for Medicaid and its implications for national health policy. Although there are disagreements over the extent to which public funds should be used to subsidize immigrant health coverage, this Article reveals that decentralized policymaking on immigrant access to Medicaid has weakened national health policy. It has failed to incentivize the type of state policy experimentation and replication that justifies federalism …


Immigrants And Interdependence: How The Covid-19 Pandemic Exposes The Folly Of The New Public Charge Rule, Medha D. Makhlouf, Jasmine Sandhu Jan 2020

Immigrants And Interdependence: How The Covid-19 Pandemic Exposes The Folly Of The New Public Charge Rule, Medha D. Makhlouf, Jasmine Sandhu

Faculty Scholarly Works

On February 24, 2020, just as the Trump administration began taking significant action to prepare for an outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States, it also began implementing its new public charge rule. Public charge is an immigration law that restricts the admission of certain noncitizens based on the likelihood that they will become dependent on the government for support. The major effect of the new rule is to chill noncitizens from enrolling in public benefits, including Medicaid, out of fear of negative immigration consequences. These chilling effects have persisted during the pandemic. When noncitizens are afraid to (1) seek …


The Ethics Of Dna Testing At The Border, Medha D. Makhlouf Jan 2020

The Ethics Of Dna Testing At The Border, Medha D. Makhlouf

Faculty Scholarly Works

From 2018 to 2020, the U.S. government dramatically expanded DNA surveillance of immigrants. The most recent expansion, finalized in March 2020, effectively requires the collection of DNA from all immigration detainees and storage of their genetic information in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (“FBI”) Combined DNA Index System (“CODIS”) database for criminal forensic investigation. This new policy is ethically troubling because it fails to address the potential privacy harms it creates; shifts the application of DNA analysis for criminal investigation from retrospective to prospective assessment of criminality; and disparately impacts racial and ethnic minorities. In this time of extreme immigration …


Destigmatizing Disability In The Law Of Immigration Admissions, Medha D. Makhlouf Jan 2020

Destigmatizing Disability In The Law Of Immigration Admissions, Medha D. Makhlouf

Faculty Contributions to Books

In U.S. immigration law, disability has historically been associated with deviance, and has served as the basis for legal barriers to entry and eventual citizenship. For example, immigrants with actual and perceived physical and intellectual disabilities, mental illness, and other health conditions have been deemed “inadmissible” to the United States based on the belief that they are likely to become dependent on the government for support. Although the law has evolved to accommodate immigrants with disabilities in some ways, significant legal barriers still exist on account of the widespread, persistent characterization of disability as a “bad difference” from the norm. …