Kris Kobach might win his cruel suit over Dreamers’ health care. Americans would lose | Opinion

Even when Kris Kobach is right, he’s wrong.

Kansas’ attorney general last week announced yet another lawsuit against the Biden administration — this time for attempting to extend eligibility to buy Affordable Care Act health insurance to DACA recipients, the so-called “Dreamers” who migrated to the United States illegally with their parents decades ago and who currently live in a sort of legal limbo as a result.

They’re citizens without a country. And Kobach wants to make life harder for them.

“When word about taxpayer-subsidized health care reaches the home countries of would-be illegal aliens, many more will make the journey,” Kobach said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “When you reward illegal behavior, you get more of it.”

His argument — and the argument of 14 other GOP attorneys general, including Missouri’s Andrew Bailey — is that the White House effort violates a federal law which bans giving public benefits to undocumented migrants.

The administration, Kobach said, “shouldn’t get a free pass to violate federal law.”

You know what? From a technical and strictly legal standpoint, Kobach might actually be correct. Federal law generally prohibits federal benefits from going to undocumented migrants, though there are some exceptions. Certainly, a conservative Supreme Court eager to hem in President Joe Biden might be willing to side with a Republican attorney general on this matter.

From a policy standpoint, though, the lawsuit is simply cruel.

Make no mistake: Kobach’s argument is primarily about policy. He’s saying the Biden administration is breaking the law, yes — but he’s also saying that helping Dreamers is a bad idea even if the idea is legal.

“Illegal aliens shouldn’t get a free pass into our country,” he wrote, “and they shouldn’t receive taxpayer benefits when they arrive.”

Which means that nearly 5,000 DACA recipients in Kansas — and more than 2,500 Dreamers in Missouri — would be left out in the cold. Again.

Americans, if not US citizens

Just a little reminder about who DACA recipients are: They have to have entered the United States before their 16th birthday, which means they were mostly brought here (through no choice of their own) by parents seeking a better life. And they have to have lived here continuously since 2007, which means they’ve already lived here for nearly two decades or more.

Technically, they’re not U.S. citizens. That’s true.

In a very real sense, though, they’re Americans — people who have largely grown up in the United States, acculturated here, and who have lifelong bonds here. That’s also true, no matter what the law says.

Members of Congress have made several attempts over the last few decades to grant the DACA folks permanent status. They’ve been blocked every time by right-wing Republicans who would rather see those onetime migrants deported to countries they haven’t seen in decades.

Like I said: cruel.

There are two reasons why the suit doesn’t make sense on its own terms.

First, the Biden policy applies only to Dreamers. The current wave of migrants will see no such benefits. So it’s doubtful (no matter what Kobach argues) they’d be drawn to our borders with the hope that someday, decades hence, a future administration might — or might not — also allow their then-adult children to purchase health benefits via the ACA.

For the most part, migrants come here to work. That’s the real reward for their “illegal behavior.”

Second, undocumented migrants already get health care. They just often get that care in hospital emergency rooms, which are legally required to take all comers regardless of ability to pay. That’s why the federal government spends an estimated $7 billion a year on emergency services for undocumented migrants.

You’re already paying for migrant health care, in other words. You’re just doing it in the most costly, cumbersome way possible.

Kobach might win his lawsuit. Give him that. But that victory would be bad for Dreamers and costly for taxpayers. You’ve got to wonder: How do Kansas or Missouri actually benefit?

Joel Mathis is a regular Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle Opinion correspondent. Formerly a writer and editor at Kansas newspapers, he served nine years as a syndicated columnist.