Hispanics should not be afraid that their illegal relatives will be discovered and deported through Obamacare enrollment information, President Obama said Tuesday during an interview with Univision Deportes.
The Hill reports:
“Well, the main thing for people to know is that any information you get, you know, asked with respect to buying insurance, does not have anything to do with … the rules governing immigration,” Obama said. “And you know, you can qualify if you’re a legal resident, if you are … legally present in the United States.
“You know, if you have a family where some people are citizens or legally here, and others are not documented, the immigration people will never get that information.”
Adolf Falcon, the senior vice president of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health, told The Hill that Hispanic families are wary of Obama’s assurances because of his record on deportations.
“It is a big concern of mixed status families — they hear [the president’s] assurance, but because of the level of deportations that have happened, there’s a lot of families that don’t know whether they can trust that assurance,” he said. “It creates an atmosphere of concern.”
Obama encouraged Hispanics to enroll even if "they're in a mixed-family status." Meaning, for instance, that parents who are in the country illegally should not be afraid "the immigration people" will deport them if they enroll their legal child.
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Hispanic sign-ups would create a substantial boost to Obamacare enrollment numbers. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found:
As many as 1 in 4 uninsured individuals who are eligible for coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace nationwide are Latino. Through the Marketplace, 10.2 million uninsured Latinos have new opportunities for affordable health insurance coverage. The majority (62 percent) of uninsured Latinos live in California, Texas, and Florida; about half (4.6 million) are between the ages of 18 and 35.
Obama seems desperate to win over this demographic. Perhaps after his poorly crafted pitch to Hispanics last week (in which he told them to prioritize health care over cable and cell phones), he is trying a new approach.
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