PROFESSOR MAKHLOUF COMMENTS ON IMMIGRATION POLICIES FOR COVID-19 LAW AND POLICY BRIEFINGS
April 2020 — Professor Medha Makhlouf recently presented a live briefing about the impact of immigration policies on pandemic response at the invitation of Public Health Law Watch, a collaborative initiative that provides expert legal analysis of legislative and regulatory changes that have the potential to impact public health.
During the briefing, Professor Makhlouf discussed the impact of the Department of Homeland Security’s new public charge rule, which restricts admission of certain immigrants based on the likelihood that they will become dependent on the government. She described how the expansion of public charge policy will likely deter noncitizens from seeking testing and treatment relating to COVID-19, impeding the United States’ response to the pandemic. Professor Makhlouf also described the law governing noncitizens’ access to health care and other public benefits during the pandemic, including eligibility for benefits provided by the various COVID-19 relief laws. Professor Makhlouf presented alongside Wendy E. Parmet, Professor and Director of the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University School of Law. The briefing was hosted by Nicolas Terry, Professor and Executive Director of the William S. and Catherine S. Hall Center for Law and Health, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law.
The briefing was streamed live on Twitter and a full recording is available here.
Professor Medha D. Makhlouf is an Assistant Professor and Founding Director of the Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic at Penn State Dickinson Law. She has a joint appointment in the Department of Public Health Sciences at Penn State College of Medicine. Professor Makhlouf’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of health law, immigrants’ rights, and poverty law and policy. Her recent scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in the New York University Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review Online, and the American Journal of Law and Medicine. Professor Makhlouf’s work is available at https://works.bepress.com/medha-makhlouf/.