A cruel bit of pandering.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Many in Congress are convinced that it's impossible to be too tough on illegal immigration.

With a strong anti-immigrant wind filling their sails, lawmakers are falling all over themselves to pass legislation that panders to a hard-core portion of the electorate. These are voters whose sole position on the terrifically complex immigration issue can be summed up by the bumper sticker "What part of illegal don't you understand?"

Conservative Republicans in particular are betting that Americans who care a lot about immigration won't care very much if harsh new proof-of-citizenship laws cause a little collateral damage among legal citizens. That's why a new federal law that went into effect last Saturday is so easy to sell as a sensible deterrent to illegal immigrants' fraudulently receiving taxpayer-financed health care through Medicaid.

What part of illegal don't you understand?

One response to that question in this case is another question: What part of "unintended consequences" don't you understand?

The new law is designed, according to chief sponsor Rep. Charles Norwood Jr., R-Ga., to curtail ``the outright theft of Medicaid benefits by illegal aliens.'' OK, nobody condones outright theft. So, how big a problem is this theft?

That's hard to say. Forty-six states already require Medicaid applicants to swear, under penalty of perjury, that they are U.S. citizens. States have been able to demand substantiation in suspicious cases. When a federal inspector general studied the issue last year, the problem of illegal immigrants lying about their citizenship to steal Medicaid benefits turned out not to be much of a problem.

Enter Representative Norwood and his colleagues with a take-no-prisoners solution to this non-problem. As of Saturday, every state's poorest residents will need to prove that they are U.S. citizens to sign up for or to continue to receive care under Medicaid.

Proof such as a passport or birth certificate, accompanied by a driver's license or something else that definitively establishes identity, is required. No documents, no medical care. States that fail to comply with the letter of the law face complete cutoff of their federal Medicaid funds.

Unlike the made-up problem of illegal immigrants stealing benefits, there is a disaster in the making for many poor and disabled U.S. citizens who depend on Medicaid. Patients who suffer from dementia or mental illness, have no immediate family, weren't born in hospitals or lack copies of personal records are at risk of losing benefits.

The grim new guidelines, which affect about 55 million people who receive health care benefits under the state-administered Medicaid program, prohibit states from extending coverage to new applicants while they try to come up with acceptable documents. There aren't any exceptions, even in the case of Hurricane Katrina-style natural disasters.

A class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago argues that the law unconstitutionally violates the Fifth Amendment's due-process guarantee by arbitrarily requiring documents and imposing deadlines on U.S. citizens who have done nothing wrong. The suit seeks a temporary suspension of the new law while the case is being decided.

If the courts don't agree to intervene, Congress needs to take another crack at this solution in search of a problem. For one thing, hurricane season has only just begun.