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BY ALICIA CRUZ
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Three New Jersey immigrants with green cards filed a discrimination suit against the state Tuesday, saying officials used their immigration status as a reason to remove them from state-subsidized health care.
The plaintiffs, two from Ecuador, and the third from Jamaica, are in the United States as permanent legal residents, but the amount of time they have held such status — less than five years — may be the reason why they were removed from the program, which means they will lose their FamilyCare benefits under new eligibility restrictions announced earlier this year. Children and pregnant women are exempt from the cuts, which have kicked in many cases.
Their lawsuit seeks to prevent the state Department of Human Services from instituting planned budget cuts that would remove the plaintiffs, which includes approximately 12,000 other non-citizens, from New Jersey's FamilyCare program, the state's insurance plan for low-income families, such as Manual and Maria Guaman, who live in Teaneck with their three children.
All of the Guaman's children are U.S. citizens. The Guaman's came to the United States in 1992 and 2000, respectively, and became permanent legal residents in 2006. With the money that Manual Guaman earns as a cook and being the family's sole provider, they cannot afford health care without subsidies, the lawsuit says.
Jenny-Brooke Condon, attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Star Ledger that immigrants were being singled out using their alienage. "The state is saying, ‘We're going to impose upon immigrants only this additional requirement that you hold a certain status for five years.' "The law is pretty clear that those sorts of ... distinctions between similarly situated, needy individuals who all need health care and cannot afford it without assistance violates the constitution," said Condon who filed the suit in Trenton Superior Court for the Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall University's School of Law.
Nicole Brossoie, spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services, which oversees FamilyCare, said the department does not comment on pending litigation.
Sen. Joe Vitale (D-Middlesex), who opposed the FamilyCare cuts, told The Star-Ledger he supports the suit.
"These men and women work hard, play by the rules, and are on the path to citizenship that we have established and that they honor," said Vitale, a longtime proponent of FamilyCare. "To kick the overwhelming majority of them to the curb and deny proper health care upon which they have come to depend, is morally wrong and fiscally imprudent."
