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I am in Texas and my mother is disabled and a permanent resident. She hasn't meet her 5 year bar (has been a permanent resident for almost a year now) and because of this, there are no options in Texas at all for her. She had a stroke and was doing well in the first nursing home she was in but she was denied medicaid and they kicked her out. Then she was taken to a boarding home, they refused her and they took her to a hospital (for safety) and they wanted to discharge her to my care. I was guilt tripped to the extreme and fell for it. I couldn't take care of her. I live in a third floor apartment but where I live doesn't matter because I also don't have the expenses, I have my own student loans to pay off after graduating a year ago and other financial plans (for the purpose of not ending up in the same situation as her when/if I get to her age. I don't want to spend my entire savings on her healthcare and medicine). I am the only living family member. The others, they are either poor or dead. I don't know. I never hear of them including her ex-husband. It will give me a huge burden to my mental health (depression) and a burden to my finances.


After being transferred around like a tennis ball, she is currently in another nursing home and they plan to discharge her as she was denied again for the same reason (she hasn't been a permanent resident long enough). I haven't received the discharge notice (it'll come) and I am very nervous and depressed about it as this time I have no clue where to place her after discharge. The nursing home refused my advice to place her in a hospital because she has no medical emergency. If a hospital refuses to admit her, I don't know where to put her. Every texas department involving disability, health, ombudsman, the poor, and the adult protective services don't even know what to do. Hospital social workers gave me false information that she should be eligible for medicaid probably to get her out of the hospital as fast as possible.


I want to move to a state that has state funded medicaid for people that can’t get federal medicaid. Getting sick of this, I am willing to move to another state within this summer. I've been told to exhaust all my options in Texas. Well I have and things are getting worse. I am looking into Minnesota and Washington.


Can a permanent resident immigrant who hasn't met the five year bar, get nursing home coverage from a state funded medicaid in one of those states? If so, is it possible to move her there and get her set up to get into medicaid by the end of summer (I don't have much time as no one in the state seems eager to help)? Or will it be impossible due to the long wait times for approval and state residency requirements? I'm not concerned about income as she is pretty much has no home or property of her own and very little cash.

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Who is her sponsor? My husband is an immigrant, now naturalized. We have sponsored many family members to come to the USA. When you sign as a sponsor, you agree to support them for 10 years. Your mom's sponsor should be helping her. The government requires a sponsor to protect tax payers from footing the bill.
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I know I was her "petitioner for alien relative". An I-864 (financial sponsor) was not filed because my mother did not need to file an I-864 since she had worked enough years (she's been working in the US since the early 1980s). She had more than 40 work credits by the time she applied for a green card. I contacted her immigration lawyer about this and that was what he told me since he filed the application for her.
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Hmm....I would think that if she has worked that long, she should be eligible for services. I would contact an immigration or elder lawyer.
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No. The only thing she was eligible for is emergency medicaid. For Texas you would have to have 40 work credits AND meet the 5 year bar before you can get medicaid. Her SSDI application is in process but that will take awhile. Many people think she would get something but Texas (well federal medicaid) only looks at when you received qualified status.

I'm not sure I want to keep fighting this (especially in Texas) as it's a federal medicaid law (stemming from the 1996 law that passed) that all states have. Immigration or an elder lawyer would not help me out. This was why I was looking into states that have state funded programs that become an option if the person was not eligible for the federal funded medicaid.
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Look up the Medicaid program for Washington run by the Health Care Authority at hcadotwadotgov. You can review information About Apple Health, the cute name for medical programs. It looks like the Alien Emergency Medical (AEM) could cover nursing home care as well as real hospital type emergencies and dialysis treatments. You can find a phone number to call as well as search through the website.
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I don't understand Federal Medicaid vs State Medicaid. Medicaid is a state program that recieves Federal funding is how I understand it. The 40 quarters goes to her being able to receive SS benefits and Medicare. Because Medicaid is a state thing, each state veries in their rules. No matter where you move, there is going to be a waiting period before mom is eligable.
How old is Mom? You may need to put ur life on hold until you can get this straightened out. You need to sit down with a Social Worker about your living arrangements. That you feel you are not able to care for Mom and the money is not there to pay privately. Ask what would they have done if Mom had no one, throw her in the street. I doubt it. There may be programs you can use at home to get you thru till Mom is elligable. Call ur Office of the Aging.
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You said she worked in the US to get enough quarters, 40? I guess she came over the border and then home to Mexico? Is she 65? If so, if she paid into SS she is entitled to it. When she applied for SSI was this condidered? Is she entitled to a pension where she worked? If she can get SSI or SS, then she will have more options. She will get her health insurance and other benefis. That will take some of the financial burden off of you. If u haven't done it, I would get an elder lawyer involved. I have found things move faster.
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Might be better to think of MedicAid as a federal program that the states then get to mess with and adjust to their own political whims. The ACA expended Medicaid coverage but not all states opted into that. "Length" of residency is generally not going to be an issue when you move from one state to another to live when it comes to medical coverage. For example, if you move to WA with the intention of living there you are immediately a resident for the purposes we're talking about here. (Not talking about things like out of state College tuition, etc.) States have different programs that may supplement federal programs. For example, in WA, there are food benefits available to cover some people who don't meet the federal 5 year bar for food stamps. So say a family of three has two citizens and one green card holder who hasn't been here 5 years, the whole family could get food benefits. Funding for the 2 citizens is federal, funding for the Legal Permanent Resident is state. State funding may equal 100% of what that person could get if federally qualified, or less, depending on the state budget. If that family moved to WA there is no delay for length of residency for food. Same concept for medical coverage.
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I just checked on healthcaredotgov, and Texas is one of those states that did take advantage of the chance to expand Medicaid under the ACA.
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Google Emergency Medicaid for Non qualified Immigrants NIWAP Library for a chart that shows qualifications and coverage, state by state for non citizens.
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To answer JoAnn, she is not from Mexico (thank you for the assumption) and she is only 53. I applied for SSDI for her and gave them the final documents last week. The amount of time it will take to process her documents will be too long as i'm sure I have until the end of next month to come up with something. They can't discharge her without a plan but I don't want to deal with a bunch of cranky people threatening to put her on the street or doing another guilt trip session with me on the phone. She never went back to her home country. I don't know why she waited this long to get her green card but back then (90s) she married another non-citizen but she divorced and the jobs she was working back in the 80s and 90s, I guess didn't do green card support or something and as for me, I couldn't sign a family petition as I hadn't started kindergarten. I refuse to take care of someone that I can't take care of. I'm not going to move to a bigger place that is way outside my budget (I'm in austin and rental prices are increasing) to accommodate her on top of caring for her out of my pocket. I just refuse. It was going to move out of Texas anyways in the near future but everything is happening too fast.

To answer vegasLady, I'm sure Texas didn't expand their medicaid. They're busy cutting medicaid funds here. I'm sure no republican state expanded. As for state and federal medicaid, I thought that there is a federal level where all states have to require it for eligibility and the states that did expand can extend from the federal to provide their own medicaid based programs (like for Minnesota there is MinnesotaCare) for people like qualified immigrants that are not eligible for their federal level medicaid. That's my understanding. But i'll look into NIWAP and see what's there.
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I read online that the 5 year bar should not apply to immigrants who's first date of entry into the US was before August 1996 and if they obtained qualified status after the date as long as they were here continuously, the bar should not apply to them. If that is the case, my mother should not fall into the 5 year ban. But every time I speak to Texas health and human services, they keep mentioning how it doesn't matter when she entered the country, she'll have to stay in the US for five years under the permanent resident status. The "date of entry" on her green card is not really her original date of entry into the united states, that is just the date her adjustment of status was approved.

I think she was wrongly denied. I'm probably going to contact the nursing home business manager about this issue and see what she suggests. If I have to appeal the denial, I still have time.
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You are probably right. If mom was denied please use the right to request a Fair Hearing. If the time to do that has passed, do a new application, and if denied again, appeal.
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