Exclusions abound, guarantees inequality. AND, the plan will be horse-traded for cutting the safety net

Just as the ostensible simplicity of UBI obscures its harmful latent potential, the concept’s promised universality would likely be anything but. Presumably, eligibility for a universal basic income program would require official citizenship status, a distinction denied to tens of millions of undocumented immigrants, many of them poor, in the United States and abroad. Without concomitant changes to immigration legislation and policy, UBI could worsen the disadvantages that undocumented immigrants already face, enriching and empowering those with whom they already compete for jobs, housing, and social services. It’s difficult to imagine a factually realized universal basic income without attendant exclusions, the inflexible rules and language dictating who may or may not enroll in the program. No one can say where, exactly, the dividing line would fall, but it’s safe to assume that felons, who cannot vote under present law, would, alongside everyone else deemed unworthy, find themselves on the outside looking in. Meanwhile, those citizens lucky enough to gain access to the program would be submitting to governmental surveillance of untold invasiveness, where everything from purchase histories to biometric data could be used to determine eligibility.

The American government has an extensive history of denying its most vulnerable citizens access to the programs they need the most, so why would such a generous, plainly redistributive program be any exception? In all likelihood, a bill proposing a universal basic income would only pass as hodgepodge legislation, a bundle of counterposed policies that undercuts the original purpose it was drafted to serve, a UBI that bypasses the destitute to deliver funds to those who need them least. And when those inefficiencies result, wealthy private interests will be there to monetize them, to remake the social service in their own mercenary image.