The Trump administrations proposed changes to a regulation affecting green card and visa applications have prompted immigrants to forgo accessing public benefits, according to an Urban Institute study released on Wednesday.

The latest study takes a deeper dive into the impact of those widely discussed changes even before theyve gone into effect. It provides further evidence that fear and uncertainty around the proposed rule is hurting people not covered by the changes. For instance, it describes one green card holder who hopes to become a citizen: She not only chose not to receive food benefits herself but persuaded her son, a naturalized citizen, to unenroll.

In October, the Department of Homeland Security proposed new standards for the so-called public charge rule, a test applied to green card and temporary visa applicants that evaluates whether an applicant would likely become primarily dependent on the government.

The public charge proposal sits at the nexus of President Donald Trump s anti-immigrant and anti-welfare agendas, which have included efforts to make it harder to receive asylum in the U.S. and proposed cutbacks to federal nutrition assistance for poor people.

Currently, the definition of a public charge for purposes of evaluating visa and green card applicants is narrow: someone who receives cash assistance from a limited number of government programs or is institutionalized long term with the government paying for it. The new rule would drastically expand the public benefits considered to include non-cash assistance, like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and it would introduce new criteria such as an English proficiency test and an income requirement.

The proposal made its way past the Office of Management and Budget on July 31 and could be finalized any day now. Once its published, it will go into effect after 60 days and will likely be met with litigation.

The Urban Institute wrote in May that 1 in 7 adults in immigrant families surveyed online in December 2018 reported eschewing public benefits because they feared hurting their chances of obtaining a green card, which confers permanent legal status. The researchers found that the chilling effects of the proposed rule change were even impacting households where every noncitizen family member already had a green card.

The newer study helps flesh out what the stakes are for families avoiding public assistance and can also help inform policymakers and stakeholders about the needs of immigrant families now and how they might help them, said Hamutal Bernstein, a researcher on the study and a senior research associate at the institute.

The Urban Institutes results came from followup phone interviews with 25 of the respondents from the December survey who had reported chilling effects.