California, on Tuesday, became the first US state to start offering healthcare services to ‘undocumented’ citizens or ‘illegal’ immigrants under its Medicaid programme. Governor Gavin Newsom, who belongs to the Democratic Party, signed the SB-104 bill, which covers 90,000 such citizens between the ages of 19 and 25. The services, which would have a cumulative worth of $98 million, will only be offered to those whose earnings are significantly less.

Newman tweeted on Wednesday, “We’re fighting for healthcare for all. We’re demanding clean air and water. We’re defending reproductive freedom. And we’re protecting our vulnerable communities.

No matter what Trump’s Administration does.”

Further, before the bill was made into a law, Newman had said, “To my friends at Fox News, I know we’re keeping you in business…Universal health care is a right regardless of immigration status…I’m going to get the rest of that done, mark my words, and make progress next year and the year after that.”

The new law has also implemented an individual mandate, which makes it compulsory for Californians to have health insurance. Failure to do so will result in fines. However, if all Californians signed up for health insurance, the funds with the state governments would run dry and not be sufficient to run other programmes, warned the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Office in the state.

President Donald Trump has been bluntly critical of this move, saying that he considers citizens and illegal migrants to be like apples and oranges, and that the latter should not be treated equally as the former group of people. He further accused the Democrats of treating ‘illegal’ migrants better than legit citizens.