HOW would you feel if you found out that Washington was treating families with young children better than it was treating old people?
Now, how’d you react if that inferior treatment of the elderly led to their — and maybe even your — impoverishment?
You’ve probably noticed that health-care reform has been taking up a large portion of Washington’s time lately. Underlying all of the political jousting is one simple fact: An illness or injury could bankrupt a family with inadequate insurance coverage, or none at all.
Diseases and injuries happen to some people, but all of us are guaranteed to get old someday, and there’s a portion of our immigration law that you should know about, because it could keep you from saving a lot of money when you get too old or sick to care for yourself.
While the subject of immigration law might make you want to move to another part of the paper, stay with me a little longer and I’ll show you how our laws are not being applied equally.
A J-1 Visa applies to so-called foreign au pairs. They are the young women — and occasionally men — who come from other countries, supposedly so they can experience our culture. In reality, they provide inexpensive child care for harried moms and dads.
“Affordable, flexible child care at just over $7 an hour or $347 per family, per week,” says the promotional material for Au Pair in America, one of the many companies that put American families together with au pairs.
So, for just $347 a week, or around $18,000 a year, parents can have young women live with the family, take over parenting duties, run errands, prepare meals and whatever else the au pair is willing to do.
OK, so what if you’d like one of these au pairs to live with your ailing mother as an alternative to, say, a $70,000 a year nursing home? You can’t do it. The J-1 Visa only applies to childcare.
Why? Nobody seems to know, except for the fact that this immigration rule was written before elder-care issues became hot.
What about the ideal of everyone being treated equally and equal protection under the law? It doesn’t apply. Legal experts say that Congress is allowed to write immigration laws, or any law, for that matter, that discriminate against certain groups. In this case, Congress would rather you ship grandma off to the nursing home instead of letting her live in her own place with a (cheap) au pair.
You might be thinking, given there are plenty of Americans who need jobs right now, why should foreigners be taking care of our old people? A fair question, but then why are foreigners coming into our country and taking care of our kids?
I discovered this oddity because of personal experience. And I can tell you that state Medicaid programs and your family are more likely to incur extraordinary nursing-home costs than large bills for medical procedures.
I’ve discussed this matter with the folks at the American Association of Retired Persons, which is supposed to protect the interests of the elderly, and they just weren’t interested.
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How nice of Bank of America!
The company that took government funds in a bailout told credit-card customers in October that their interest rates were going up.
Then a few weeks ago, BofA rescinded that increase with a note: “We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused as we continue to evaluate our business practices in response to changing market and eco nomic conditions.”
Now maybe BofA will raise the interest rates it’s giving to savers and we’ll all be happy. john.crudele@nypost.com