Giving Compass' Take:

• Harris Meyer reports that proposed immigration reform could threaten public health according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. 

• How can funders help shape policies that best serve the health needs of Americans? 

• Find out why immigration funders must invest in long-term solutions. 

Healthcare leaders warn that a pending Trump administration rule penalizing legal immigrants for using government benefits like Medicaid would hurt public health efforts and reduce their ability to serve millions of low-income children and families.

According to a revised draft of the 223-page rule leaked in March, the Trump administration will allow immigration officials to consider legal immigrants' use of public health insurance, nutrition and other programs as a strongly negative factor in their applications for legal permanent residency. The change also applies to citizens' and legal residents' requests to bring family members into the U.S., as well as to young people who have legal status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as Dreamers.

The Office of Management and Budget published a notice in July that the rule was under consideration, and an administration official said details of the rule were weeks away from being finalized, the New York Times reported. The OMB said it doesn't need to conduct an economic analysis of the rule because the impact would be less than $100 million, a claim that provider groups have challenged.

If the draft proposal is finalized, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that up to 2 million children who are U.S. citizens with immigrant parents could drop out of Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, and most would become uninsured. That's because the parents would worry that their children's use of those programs could jeopardize their legal status. Those concerns likely would spill over to children of undocumented immigrants, who are not covered by the proposed rule.

Read the full article about immigration reform and public health by Harris Meyer at Modern Healthcare.