Trump Is About to Require Huge Bond for Green Card Applicants — and It’s Long Overdue

The $100,000 bond proposal is a mechanism for restoring that filter in an era when we can no longer abolish the welfare state itself. It does not bar legal immigration. It does not discriminate by nationality, ethnicity, or religion. It simply requires that people who wish to immigrate permanently to the United States demonstrate — with actual money, not a signed affidavit — that they are capable of supporting themselves without becoming a burden to American taxpayers.

The left will scream that this is unfair to poor immigrants. They are missing the point deliberately. The question is not whether poor people deserve sympathy. Of course they do. The question is whether the United States has an obligation to absorb unlimited numbers of people who will immediately require government support — while American citizens who need those same services wait in line behind them. The answer is no. It has never been yes.

The existing public charge rule — which is supposed to prevent exactly this — has been so thoroughly watered down, litigated, and selectively enforced that it provides essentially no real filter at all. A bond requirement is a concrete, enforceable mechanism. It doesn’t depend on a bureaucrat’s subjective assessment of someone’s likely future financial trajectory. It requires demonstrated financial capacity, period.