(A)  Elements of the Deportation Ground.  Any noncitizen is deportable who has become a public charge within five years after entry from causes not affirmatively shown to have arisen since entry.[1326]  NOTE: No conviction is required to establish this ground of deportation.  There is a related ground of deportation for a noncitizen who is inadmissible at the time of entry, see § 7.197, infra, and a noncitizen is inadmissible who is likely to become a public charge.  It may, however, be difficult to prove the person was inadmissible at entry, so the current deportation ground was created in 1917 by Congress and continues under current law.[1327]

           

            Under the 1952 Act, the Attorney General determined who qualified as a public charge.[1328]  Under earlier legislation, however, the courts deemed the finding of “public charge” to some extent a legal question.[1329]  The current law does not specify who determines whether a noncitizen is a public charge.

[1326] INA § 237(a)(5), 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(5). 

[1327] See S. Rep. No. 64-352 (1917).

[1328] See Jerry Maslow, Recasting Our Deportation Law, 56 Colum. L. Rev. 309, 340 (1956).

[1329] See Gegiow v. Uhl, 239 U.S. 3 (1915).

Other

DEPORTATION - PUBLIC CHARGE
According to the INS Guidance issued in the Federal Register in May of 1999, the only types of benefits that raise public charge issues are cash income assistance programs like TANF and SSI.  Housing subsidy programs are not among the programs that INS considered creating public charge concerns.  In fact they were expressly excluded. Hopefully when it publishes a final rule on public charge, USCIS will reaffirm the earlier INS Guidance.