To be an undocumented person in the United States of America has never been easy. It is difficult to come into the U.S. without papers, and once you are here in the country it is hard to find work without documentation. In the U.S., if you are undocumented it makes it challenging to own a car, to rent a home, and of course to buy one. And at any point in a person’s life, one can become sick. If you are undocumented and become very ill, it has always been very hard to get affordable healthcare.
If you are uninsured in this country, both citizens and undocumented alike, you will be paying out-of-pocket for your medical expenses. Undocumented immigrants do not have access to federally funded healthcare coverage, including Medicaid, Medicare, or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Federal law mandates that hospitals provide emergency care to everyone, regardless of their immigration status. However, due to new restrictions in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), states will receive less federal funding for these emergency services beginning October 1, 2026. The uninsured already often put off routine healthcare checkups to avoid the expenses, seeking medical attention only in an emergency. It means that the emergency room is often the only option for the uninsured, and thus treatment can be quite costly.
This is how it has always been in the United States of America. Only in a last minute ditch effort in 2023 and 2024 did California, and a handful of other U.S. states, pretend to care for immigrants and issue legislation to provide medical care for the undocumented registered in their states. However, the recent federal legislation passed through the OBBBA forced many of those states, including California, to terminate that legislation to protect the state from incurring fines from the federal government.
President Trump and his cronies have angered so many. His policies are brutal, stir hatred, prioritize the rich, and further degrade the services intended for the people. However, one cannot be fooled by the role of the Democratic Party, who was in office before Trump and his Republican Party. The immigration policies, the destruction of public services, the limited access to healthcare for those who cannot afford it and for the undocumented, are all examples of attacks that have been promulgated by both the Democratic and Republican parties since their founding.
If the Democratic Party had really cared about undocumented immigrants, and people in the state who cannot afford medical care, protections for all people would have been guaranteed decades ago. Instead, in a last minute scramble before a presidential election, Democratic Party politicians in California changed their policy to allow undocumented Californians access to medical care through Medi-Cal. The California Medical Assistance Program (Medi-Cal or MediCal) is the California implementation of the federal Medicaid program serving low-income individuals, including families, seniors, persons with disabilities, children in foster care, pregnant people, and childless adults with incomes below 138% of the federal poverty level.
Beginning in January 2024, for the first time, undocumented immigrants of all ages qualified for Medi-Cal, making California among the first states to fund comprehensive health care for undocumented immigrants. This was an attempt to appeal to the citizens of the state who are fed up with both political parties who fail to put the livelihoods of working and unemployed peoples at the front of the political agenda.
This progressive reform lasted only two short years. Now under the OBBBA, almost all last minute attempts for reform of healthcare policy for the undocumented in this handful of states has been rolled back. Now to be an undocumented person in the U.S., one must once again rely on nonprofits for healthcare, the emergency room, and out of pocket expenses. It turns out that neither political party cares for undocumented people, nor for the highest need people living and working in this country. The treatment of the undocumented is just another egregious example of the attacks of the capitalist system against the working people of the world.
