Passing the Buck on Welfare

Tucked into the Republicans’ welfare reform package in Congress is a wrongheaded proposal to cut benefits and social services to most immigrants who are legally in the United States but who have not yet become citizens. Under the proposal, Washington, which is seeking ways to finance federal welfare reform, would shift billions of dollars in costs to states and counties. The provision should be rejected.

Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, plans to offer an amendment to the bill to strike out restrictions on public benefits to legal immigrants. A host of eligibility issues ranging from student aid to Medicaid for legal immigrants already is part of a separate immigration bill now in conference committee. There is no logic in including those matters in a welfare bill. The two issues should be handled separately.

The welfare bill now proposes to help finance the costs of reform by cutting $23 billion over six years in benefits to legal immigrants, including children and the elderly. This would be an unfair and punitive move against legal immigrants who have played by the rules.

The bill would make most legal immigrants now in the country ineligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and food stamps. Future legal immigrants (except for refugees and asylum seekers) would be ineligible for most other federal means-tested benefits (including AFDC and nonemergency Medicaid services) during their first five years in the country.

The cutbacks would disproportionately hit California, Florida, New York and Texas, the states with the biggest immigrant populations. California alone could lose $10 billion, or about 40% of the proposed $23 billion in benefit reductions. Those ineligible for such benefits would have to turn elsewhere for aid. In Los Angeles County, for example, if all affected SSI recipients sought general assistance relief instead it would cost the county $236 million annually. The cost shifting could have potentially disastrous results for the already fiscally strapped county.

The immigration bill now under consideration already includes $5.6 billion in savings from tightening eligibility requirements for legal immigrants on a variety of federal programs, including Medicaid. The attempt to use welfare reform to slip through further curbs on public assistance to legal immigrants should be called what it is--a deplorable money grab by Washington that can only hurt California.