In recent weeks, "likely to become a public charge" has made an appearance in the debates about immigration.  To judge by how the phrase has been received, one might think this was something new, but this is most definitely not the case: it appears in the Immigration Act of 1882 (An act to regulate Immigration, 47th Congress, Sess. I, Chap. 376, passed August 3, 1882. 22 Stat 214), the first federal law seeking to regulate immigration.  That law made "becoming a public charge" one of the criteria for denying entry to an immigrant. Later immigration laws fleshed out the criteria first identified in the 1882 law, establishing six categories for exclusion.  Immigrants who were deemed to fall into any of them were to be sent back to their place of embarkation at the expense of the shipping company that transported them. One set of economic issues used the terminology "likely to become a public charge"...(Read Full Post)