The New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) says that the United States House of Representatives’ passage of the Reconciliation Bill “scapegoats” Caribbean and other immigrants, while gutting Medicaid and social safety programmes.

Medicaid is a US federal and state programme that provides health care coverage to qualified individuals, based on income and assets.

NYIC, an umbrella policy and advocacy organisation that represents over 200 immigrant and refugee rights groups throughout New York, said that the House Republicans narrowly passed President Donald Trump’s reconciliation bill last Thursday in a largely party-line vote of 215-214, advancing his domestic agenda “at the expense of working families”

The legislation, which now heads to the US Senate, will cut taxes for the wealthy, considered the biggest wealth transfer in US history, while eliminating tax credits for working families and slashing critical programs like Medicaid, food assistance, education and clean energy.

“This bill will supercharge an immigration enforcement agenda that threatens constitutional protections,” NYIC president and chief executive officer, Murad Awawdeh, told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC).

“The Trump administration and Congressional Republicans keep proving over and over again that their only aim is to serve the wealthy, while gutting the social safety net programs that serve low-income people, children and the elderly.

“The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ turned out to be one big lemon for Americans across the country. If the Senate passes this bill as is, it will take food off the table of vulnerable families, blocking those same families from accessing life-saving programs, including resulting in up to 1.5 million New Yorkers potentially losing their health coverage.”

Awawdeh said the bill pours about US$150 billion into border security, the military and immigration enforcement, expanding Trump’s cruel detention and deportation machine.

“This budget endangers the health and well-being of all our families and collective futures, whether we live in New York, Ohio or Texas,” he said, urging the Senate to “reject this dangerous plan and instead pass a budget that reflects the values of dignity and opportunity for all.”

Caribbean-American Democratic Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke has also strongly condemned the Republican Party’s passage of Trump’s “Big Ugly Bill.”

“While the American people slept, Republicans passed the largest cut to healthcare in our nation’s history,” Clarke, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, told CMC.

“Their Big Ugly Bill is an attack on their own constituents, it is an attack on children, veterans, the disabled, and our most vulnerable, and it is an attack on the less fortunate, all in the name of serving the ultra-rich.

“Americans are not falling for Republican propaganda about so-called waste and fraud,” added the representative for the 9th Congressional District in Brooklyn, New York, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus.

“This was a ruse to rip medicine out of the hands of sick children to fund tax breaks for their obscenely wealthy puppet masters. And the audacity of my colleagues across the aisle to pretend otherwise is nothing but an insult.”

Clarke said House Democrats “stood in the breach and voted unanimously against this villainous scheme.

“As a result, Americans nationwide are now waking up in fear for their lives and livelihoods. We already knew House Republicans are utterly subservient to President Trump, but to see so many of them defy their own principles and on-the-record positions just to avoid the wrath of one man is simply shameful.

“At every step, they’ve aided and abetted his ruthless, careless and inhumane agenda of harm against the American people, all while blowing out the deficit they periodically pretend to care about,” she added.

Prior to the bill’s passage, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who represents the 8th Congressional District, encompassing parts of Brooklyn and Queens in New York, envisaged that Republicans would pay for their votes in the mid-term elections.

“I think that when the story is told of the 119th Congress, when the votes are ultimately cast on that first Tuesday in November next year, that this day may very well turn out to be the day that House Republicans lost control of the United States,” he said.

In updating New Yorkers on the “harmful effects” of several healthcare provisions already passed by the US House of Representatives, New York Governor Kathy Hochul warned that these provisions collectively amount to an annual loss of nearly US$13.5 billion for New Yorkers and the healthcare sector.

She said the cuts would jeopardise healthcare access for millions of New Yorkers, while imperilling the state’s hospitals and other healthcare providers.

US Senate Minority Leader Charles “Chuck” Schumer said, “This is as cruel and heartless as it gets.

“Trump and House Republicans want to kick 1.5 million New Yorkers off their health insurance and rip away US$13.5 billion from New York’s hospitals and healthcare economy, so they can have bigger tax breaks for billionaires and corporations.

“New House Republicans promised for months they would protect Medicaid, but now New Yorkers know the truth: they never intended to keep that promise, and this confirms it,” he said.