White House senior adviser Stephen Miller and the Department of Homeland Security have put together a proposal that would limit legal immigrants’ ability to become permanent residents and citizens if they have previously used a government-assistance program.

Attacking illegal immigration wasn’t enough for the Trump administration, and it is now going after legal immigrants who have already proven themselves and paid for their right to be here.

Under the pretense that this is an effort to fix our welfare system, this new policy is nothing more than thinly veiled racism.

On numerous occasions, not only during his term but during his campaign as well, President Trump assured Americans that he was not after legal immigrants but only wanted to go after the “bad hombres” and curb illegal immigration. He was going to put America first, but America is nothing without its immigrants. This policy goes against everything he promised.

After hiring many questionable people to be a part of his administration, it was no surprise to many of us that his attacks on immigration would lead us here. Unsurprisingly, his supporters are determined to back this blatantly racist policy, even though they, too, insist that this is just about ensuring “people wait their turn” and “do things the right way.”

If we look past the obvious racism of the proposal, the reasons to back it don’t hold any water, either. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, published research that states when we look at individuals broken down by education, income levels, and family size, we see that poor, unskilled immigrants are less likely to use government assistance than their citizen counterparts in the same category. In fact, most immigrants aren’t even eligible to use government benefits for years, even though they pay billions of dollars into the program during that time.

Which raises the question: How does limiting residency and citizenship to legal immigrants correlate to fixing the welfare system when immigrants aren’t even the core demographic?

To penalize legal immigrants for using programs they qualify for and pay into has no logical reason. This is because before they even can enter the country, immigrants have to prove they are financially stable and can pay taxes, so it’s not even about ensuring we only allow people who are self-sufficient. We have government assistance programs for a reason, and it’s because we’ll never know when we need it.

According to Johns Hopkins Professor Robert Moffitt, during the recession, the social nets we had in place expanded significantly to meet the needs of the thousands of Americans who suddenly needed help, and obviously, they aren’t being penalized. In case we forgot, everyone was required to sign up for the Affordable Care Act (a government-assistance program) as well, but I guess we’re going to punish immigrants for following the law now, too.

The whole idea of the American Dream is that all have the opportunity to make something of themselves; that’s why people immigrate here. The journey to success is not an easy one, and there is no reason people should be denied something they’ve earned just because they needed help along the way.

Immigrants are heavily vetted, pay taxes, and pay thousands of dollars for the right to be here, and even then, it’s not enough to prove they belong here. The policies that the president and his administration create that target immigrants aren’t about safety but are about racism and xenophobia.