Activists organize around the overlap between health reform and illegal immigration issues

Illegal immigration becomes a focus of health care debate as activists on both sides organize efforts. The Washington Post reports: "As Congress's debate over health-care legislation lumbers toward a defining test for the Obama presidency, partisans on both sides of another issue -- immigration -- escalated their own proxy war this week, concluding that the fates of the two issues have become politically linked" (Hsu, 9/15).

Meanwhile, TIME reports on Rep. Joe Wilson's, R-S.C., outburst regarding illegal immigrants and notes that "both the House and Senate bills, as laid out last week, included language explicitly banning federal insurance subsidies from going to illegal immigrants." But Wilson and others say those provisions "are not enough, for two broad reasons--enforcement and indirect subsidies. As for the first issue, they worry that there will not be clear enforcement mechanisms to prevent illegals from violating the law and getting away with it. In response, lead health reform negotiator, Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat, has subsequently announced that social security numbers, or a documentary equivilent, may be required to get the subsidies. ... The second objection, indirect subsidies, involves the health care exchange" (Scherer, 9/14).

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