With no cooperation from Democrats on resolving the migrant surge at the border, President Trump is getting creative:

Anyone sponsoring an immigrant who collects welfare benefits before becoming a legal permanent resident could be on the hook for the bill. That’s according to a new presidential memorandum set to be released Thursday by the White House.

President Trump will sign the memorandum directing federal agencies to ensure that any individual sponsoring a noncitizen must take financial responsibility for any income-based welfare benefits that immigrant receives.

The move is meant to promote self-sufficiency for noncitizens and preserve the social safety net for people living legally in the country, a senior administration aide told RealClearPolitics.

“This is a historic, transformative action to restore the foundational principle of U.S. immigration law: that those seeking to join our society must support themselves financially. Furthermore, those who, for whatever reason, cannot support themselves financially, must turn to their sponsor -- not the federal government,” the aide said.

The move is a strongly common-sense measure, given that voters do oppose to extending welfare benefits to illegal migrants who've contributed nothing to this country, and whose succor has left citizens without resources as well as cheated legal migrants waiting in line.

Studies show that migrants use welfare benefits well out of proportion to their numbers, and interviews with recent caravan border surgers suggest that many are drawn to the U.S. over far more logical nearby countries by the vast benefit packages offered by states such as California, the latest of which is free medical care in the works, amounting to a cost-free life on U.S. welfare and public benefits. Not surprisingly, those incentives have doubled California's illegal immigrant count from the 1 million of 1994 to the more than 2 million today, and the surge going on now is largely because of judicial rulings that always support handouts to foreigners in the U.S. illegally.

For Trump, the approach appears to be fireproof - just enforcing existing law rather than attempting to cut a deal on immigration reform with impeachment-obsessed Democrats, or else attempting to govern the Obama Way, by executive order, which as we have seen, almost always results in an overturning by leftist courts.

There will be media sob stories about illegals losing federal benefits from the activist-influenced press seeking to sway public opinion, and that's to be expected, but even that may fail spectacularly given the embedded booby trap within it.

The law that's being enforced, the 1996 Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, were both backed and passed by current Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden from his days as a Democratic moderate in the Senate.

It was a law that followed from voter sentiment, dating at least to 1994, when California's voters overwhelmingly voted to pass Proposition 187, 59%-41% on 60% turnout, to deny welfare benefits and all but emergency medical care to illegal aliens. That law was what voters wanted but it was overturned by a left-wing judge in favor of the side he liked. The Democratic governor at the time declined to pursue an appeal, so the message was out that benefits were a sure thing for illegals, and not surprisingly, California's illegal immigrant count soared to number one in the nation, doubling from 1 million in 1994 to more than 2.2 million today.

Enforcing this will be an embarrassment to old Joe, yet another thing in his record that he will foolishly disown to explain that he's a reformed man now, same as he did with his Anita Hill stance and quite a few other measures. Will that undercut his campaign? No doubt about it.

Image credit: Obama White House, official portrait, with minor modification by Monica Showalter