President Trump’s administration unveiled a new regulation to limit green cards and visas for immigrants who have received a various forms of welfare, the Department of Homeland Security announced Saturday.

“This proposed rule will implement a law passed by Congress intended to promote immigrant self-sufficiency and protect finite resources by ensuring that they are not likely to become burdens on American taxpayers," DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said, per NBC.

The proposal is rooted in a federal law that restricts immigration for people “likely to become a public charge,” according to U.S. Customs and Immigration Services; a “public charge” is someone “primarily dependent on the government for subsistence.” A regulation promulgated in 1999 construed that law as applying only to cash benefits, NBC explained, but the new proposal would broaden the list of benefits.

"The [disqualifying] benefits generally represent the largest federal programs for low-income people by total expenditure that address basic living needs such as income, housing, food, and medical care," according to a DHS spokeswoman.

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That has been a priority of Attorney General Jeff Sessions for years, particularly when he was the top Republican on the Budget Committee during President Barack Obama’s tenure. Stephen Miller, a top communications aide when Sessions was in the Senate, is now a senior White House adviser.

“It is an explicit and unambiguous tenet in federal law that those granted entry into the U.S. must be able to support themselves financially,” Sessions’ team argued in 2013. In sum: Despite laws to the contrary, virtually no one is being turned away from the United States for relying on federal welfare.”

Immigrant advocates argue that it will harm poor immigrants, even those who already live in the U.S. with government assistance and have American citizens in their household.

“This is a radical proposal to do an end run around Congress,” Jackie Vimo, policy analyst at the National Immigration Law Center in Washington, told the Los Angeles Times in August. “This will close the door to anyone except white, English-speaking, wealthy immigrants.”

But Sessions warned about the financial cost of immigration throughout his tenure at the Budget Committee.

“Encouraging self-sufficiency must be a bedrock for our immigration policy, with the goal of reducing poverty, strengthening the family, and promoting our economic values,” he said in 2013.