We know that our communities do better when kids have the nutrition they need, when families can get health care when they need it, and when immigrants feel welcome and safe. But the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress continue to threaten the foundations that support thriving communities. The recently passed Congressional House reconciliation bill includes proposals that will hurt all of us, including devastating reductions in essential services that meet people’s basic needs. The bill includes provisions that particularly target immigrants, despite the fact that these reductions in coverage save negligible revenue and have disastrous impacts for community health and wellbeing.
The harmful cuts in the bill include:
- Almost $300 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), including expanded work requirements for some populations, which will make it harder for families with low incomes to put food on the table. Approximately 149,000 Washington families would be at risk of losing access to food under this proposal.
- Around $723 billion in Medicaid cuts, which would mean an estimated 500,000 people in Washington could lose health care coverage. This will raise health care costs and medical debt and force families to compromise their basic needs to access care, especially in rural Washington, where Medicaid covers up to 57% of certain counties.
According to analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), these cuts fund $124 billion in tax handouts to the wealthiest 1%, as well as $164 billion in tax handouts for multi-national corporations, at the expense of the basic needs and livelihoods of working families. This is despite the fact that 70% of Americans believe that corporations are already paying too little in taxes.
To find out more about the negative impact of the budget reconciliation bill on working people in Washington, see this fact sheet from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Immigrants are vital members of our communities and economy, and the Trump administration’s policies hurt all of us
Immigrants are a particular target of the House reconciliation bill, through exclusionary tax and benefits policies that will hurt immigrants of all statuses and their citizen children. This includes a $151.3 billion increase in spending on mass deportation in the next few years. Federal policy changes that target immigrants and create fear of retaliation for participation in community life and politics are impacting all Washingtonians, in part by hurting people’s ability to take care of their families and communities. The recent budget package passed by the House includes proposals that will make it harder for immigrants in Washington to access essential services like health care coverage and federal tuition assistance.
Undocumented workers are major taxpayers in Washington. They contribute $1 billion a year in state and local taxes, and a further $2 billion in federal taxes. This revenue props up Medicaid and Social Security for U.S. citizens – essential benefits that undocumented individuals cannot access. Our report on the economic and fiscal impact of mass deportation highlights how Washington’s economy and state budget will suffer if even 10% of the working people that Trump says he wants to deport, are deported.
House bill makes it harder for people to get tax credits and health care
These are just a few of the ways the House Budget Reconciliation bill hurts immigrant communities in Washington:
The bill strips the Child Tax Credit from children in mixed status families
The Child Tax Credit (CTC) is one of the most successful anti-poverty tools that Congress has, but the House bill not only continues to exclude children without Social Security Numbers (SSNs) from the CTC, but also excludes U.S. citizen children if even one parent files taxes with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). ITINs are an alternative to an SSN used by some undocumented taxpayers and people with certain visas. This exclusion would prevent 4.5 million U.S. citizen children nationwide from accessing this critical economic support. In Washington state, this CTC policy change would block 137,000 U.S. citizen children from eligibility.
In 2024, the CTC put an average of $2,212 back into the pockets of families with low and moderate incomes statewide. The proposed CTC changes would hurt families across the state, but the largest impact would be in Central and Eastern Washington. In Congressional District 4 alone, which includes Yakima and the Tri-Cities, 35,000 children are at risk of losing the CTC if this budget goes through.
Additionally, the House bill further strips the ability of immigrant taxpayers to claim deductions, exemptions, and tax credits that help people pay for college and purchase health insurance – effectively increasing the tax rate for many immigrants including people with certain visas and undocumented workers. Immigrants in Washington state already pay the second highest tax rate compared to other states, and pay an effective tax rate more than two times that of the wealthiest 1%.
The bill cuts funding for health care and penalizes states that provide health coverage for immigrants
Washington state proudly provides health care coverage to some undocumented individuals through expansions to Medicaid. The House reconciliation bill would punish states that provide health care coverage to all residents, regardless of status, by reducing the federal matching dollars for Medicaid, which would strain state health care funding for all residents.
Fourteen states plus Washington, D.C. offer coverage to children regardless of status by using state dollars to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to undocumented children. Washington state also offers Medicaid coverage to pregnant individuals, regardless of immigration status. The Apple Health Expansion program, which currently covers around 13,000 individuals in Washington, offers coverage for undocumented adults who wouldn’t otherwise qualify. This access to care lowers costs for all Washingtonians and helps save lives.
Over the next ten years, this unjust penalty could cost the state up to $10 billion dollars. Cuts to Medicaid and harsh work requirements included in this bill could mean around 500,000 people in Washington state lose health care coverage. Additionally, immigrants are a critical backbone of the nursing and homecare workforce. The combination of Trump’s mass deportation agenda and efforts to roll back Medicaid will be a devastating one two punch to Americans – undermining our ability to care for our elders with dignity and increasing costs across the board for working people.
What can be done?
Despite the massive fear caused by violent threats from a federal administration which has shown little respect for the limits of its powers, immigrant communities remain incredibly resilient. They are continuing to show up, take care of their kids, go to work, and support their communities and local economies. We all have a role to play in stopping this budget from passing – and in protecting our immigrant neighbors in Washington state. Specifically:
- If Washington state faces additional budget cuts as a result of this federal budget, lawmakers must convene to pass progressive revenue, so we have ample state funding to protect and expand basic state services like SNAP, cash support, housing assistance, health care, and dual language programs that support the children of immigrants.
- Lawmakers must protect the The Keep Washington Working Act which keeps immigrant data from being shared with ICE. State leaders can clarify and strengthen internal state agency policy that prohibits sharing data with federal agencies, including health care data, driver’s license data, law enforcement data, or any other form of data collected.
- State lawmakers and everyday people need to call on Washington state’s Congressional delegation to vote no on this terrible bill.
This post is the first in a series. Stay tuned for further analysis and research detailing the ways that state agencies and elected leaders can protect immigrants in the face of federal threats to immigrant communities.
