Proposed Cutbacks in Aid Alarm Legal Immigrants

Six years ago, Soon Chang Hong and his wife left South Korea and came to live with their daughter in Southern California. When her business faltered, Hong says, the couple were forced to turn to public assistance.

Today, the former Korean cement company executive and his spouse collect $1,100 a month in government checks, live in a federally subsidized apartment and qualify for Medi-Cal health benefits.

“In Korea my children would support me,” the 74-year-old Hong says, “but here it is different.”

It is a difference that many Americans want to erase, including the large majority in Congress who support pending welfare overhaul legislation that would slash benefits for legal immigrants. To would-be reformers, the recent surge in elderly immigrants living on relief signals widespread exploitation of the nation’s historic generosity toward newcomers.

Advocates fighting to retain services say that immigrants who receive public benefits are the exception, but that those who do are almost always truly needy, sometimes one step from destitution. The legislative momentum is against them, however.

The cuts--estimated at $20 billion to $30 billion over six years--would hit especially hard in Los Angeles County, the nation’s primary magnet for new arrivals. The legislation, expected to reach President Clinton this week as part of the larger welfare restructuring, would end or drastically curtail immigrants’ access to scores of programs, including food stamps, cash benefits, job training and subsidized health coverage.

The welfare plan’s treatment of noncitizens amounts to a fundamental shift in social policy: For the first time, the law would restrict benefits for legal immigrants--not the unlawful arrivals targeted by California’s Proposition 187. Illegal immigrants are already denied most federal entitlements.

No one knows with precision how many legal immigrants collect benefits, but the number approaches, and may exceed, 2 million. According to a congressional estimate, California, home to about 40% of the nation’s immigrants, is also the place of residence of more than half the estimated 1.5 million legal immigrants receiving either Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for the aged, disabled and blind, or Aid to Families With Dependent Children, just two of many programs available to immigrants. The Hongs are among the burgeoning number of noncitizens on SSI, a program whose explosive growth in recent years has become a flash point in the debate.

Although lawful immigrants account for about 5% of federal social spending, the cuts targeting them represent more than 40% of the planned congressional welfare savings, according to the National Immigration Law Center, a pro-immigrant advocacy group based in Los Angeles.

Word of the planned rollback has resounded in immigrant enclaves nationwide. Social service groups in Los Angeles report being besieged with desperate callers. There is vast confusion. Opponents are mobilizing to pressure for a presidential veto.

“I don’t know what my family would do without this help,” said Long Ma, 18, a teacher’s assistant who lives with his parents and two younger siblings in Los Angeles. All arrived together three years ago as refugees from Vietnam. The family receives the equivalent of about $1,000 a month in federal food stamps and cash payments, Ma said.

The aid reflects the recognition that most refugees arrive with few resources, sometimes barely escaping with their lives. Refugees, along with elderly SSI recipients and obstetrical patients, are the heaviest noncitizen welfare users, experts say. Non-refugee, working-age immigrants tend to use welfare benefits at about the same rate as the comparable U.S. native population, studies show, even though the immigrants are generally poorer.

Under the congressional plan, refugee families would be guaranteed access to benefits for only five years--barely enough, critics say, to ensure their difficult transition into American life.

But refugees are just one piece of the multinational mosaic that is contemporary America, where immigration levels now rival the historic highs of a century ago.

Many may assume that today’s immigration is largely a Latin American and Asian affair. But many Europeans, Canadians, Africans and others are among those facing cutbacks.

“I’d be destitute if I were to lose this help,” said Sara Stevens, a 52-year-old native of Northern Ireland who lives in Los Angeles. The single woman’s driving fear: homelessness.

Afflicted with a heart condition and other ailments, Stevens receives a monthly SSI check of about $300 to complement the $300 or so she gets from Social Security. Stevens finds her predicament particularly bitter: She worked in the United States for more than nine years before she was stricken. Under the congressional bills, immigrants who have paid 40 quarters of Social Security taxes--the equivalent of 10 years--are exempt from the SSI ban. She just misses out.

“We pay taxes, we work hard in this country, but they’re treating us like we’re less than human,” Stevens said. “Do they think we like being sick?”

Like many other longtime green card holders, Stevens deeply regrets not having applied for U.S. citizenship, which legal immigrants generally may seek after five years. She plans to apply soon, as do the Hongs and many others. In fact, the threat of a benefit cutoff is helping to propel a record number of people, about 1.2 million, to seek citizenship this year. (Naturalized citizens are eligible for the same benefits as the native-born.)

The unprecedented citizenship upsurge, advocates of the cuts say, confirms what they have long said: Immigrant use of welfare is more widespread than usually assumed, and such benefits have acted as a strong draw for new settlers, especially elderly foreigners who were too old to work when they arrived in this country. SSI, many say, has become the retirement plan for the parents and grandparents of younger immigrants, often well-to-do, who have not supported their parents financially.

“People with no marketable skills are going to be attracted by a basket of social programs that add up to what they see as the American quality of life,” said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which seeks across-the-board reductions in immigration levels.

Even many immigrant rights advocates acknowledge the need to tighten regulations and increase the financial responsibilities of the relatives who typically sponsor new immigrants. In fact, the congressional plan would, for the first time, put legal teeth into so-called “affidavits of support,” the financial guarantees filed by those petitioning for people from abroad. (Under federal law, prospective immigrants must demonstrate that they will not become a “public charge”--a provision that critics say has long been enforced only on paper.)

While conceding instances of abuse, those fighting the congressional action say lawmakers have gone way too far, throwing hundreds of thousands of families into turmoil and leaving California and other immigrant-heavy states to deal with the resulting social chaos.

“This is going to wreak havoc with people’s lives--and with county finances,” said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, whose district includes immigrants from around the world. (Los Angeles County is home to about 3.2 million immigrants, almost one-third of its overall population--more than any state except California.) “I don’t think you can be an elected official in California and not be alarmed.”

Gov. Pete Wilson, whose denunciations of illegal immigration helped stoke the national debate, is voicing reservations about the congressional approach. Almost one-quarter of the state’s population is foreign-born, and Wilson aides worry about estimates that, during the welfare bill’s six-year phase-in, California could lose $10 billion to $12 billion in benefits that now go to immigrants.

Many immigrants denied services will undoubtedly be cared for by relatives. But many others will turn to local government to meet their needs.

Cash-strapped Los Angeles County estimates that its payouts for general relief--for the indigent--would about double, to almost $500 million a year. Most of the new recipients would probably be from among the ranks of the 93,000 noncitizen SSI recipients expected to be tossed off the rolls.

Among those fearing a loss of SSI is Donato G. Pedroza, 67, one of thousands of Mexican nationals who came to the United States as a bracero, or contract field hand, in the early 1950s. Like many Mexican migrants, Pedroza worked as an undocumented farm worker and factory hand for many years--about three decades, in Pedroza’s case--before he attained legal status via the amnesty program of the 1980s.

Upon retiring, however, Pedroza received Social Security credit for only a fraction of his work career. Like many others, for years Pedroza was paid in cash, without a pay stub or deductions--still a common scenario for immigrant workers, be they agricultural laborers or maids. Today, Pedroza fears that he could lose the $297 in monthly SSI checks that supplement his $249 Social Security payments.

“Sometimes I wonder if I was stupid, if I should have stayed in Mexico and gotten an education and become a professional,” Pedroza, his eyes welling with tears, told a reporter the other day during an interview at a housing complex for the elderly in downtown Los Angeles. “Instead, I left to come here to work. And now I have nothing.”

But the predicament of SSI recipients is just the beginning of Los Angeles County’s prospective fiscal woes. According to county estimates made last year, a congressional welfare overhaul could eliminate food stamps for 276,000 legal immigrants and result in denial of AFDC payments to 200,000 recipients, mostly women and children.

Perhaps most dramatic, experts say, the county’s fragile health care network, patched together after a close encounter with fiscal collapse last year, might again face unraveling. A visit to virtually any clinic or hospital servicing Los Angeles’ legions of working poor quickly explains why.

“How else could I pay to have my child if I didn’t have Medi-Cal?” asks Silvia Zavala, who was among the pregnant women awaiting checkups recently at the Community Health Foundation of East Los Angeles, a nonprofit facility serving a predominantly immigrant clientele.

Virtually all the women at the clinic rely on Medi-Cal, the California version of Medicaid, the federally funded health insurance plan for low-income people. Under the House welfare plan, legal immigrants would be barred from Medicaid, except for emergency treatment. (The Senate version would allow the states to make the call on Medicaid eligibility.)

If Medi-Cal were not available to immigrants, officials say, tens of thousands of newly uninsured patients would besiege county facilities, seeking free treatment that the county, as provider of last resort, is bound by state law to provide. Overburdened emergency rooms would face elevated demand, experts say, as many more uninsured people would avoid preventive treatment until they needed urgent care. The result: a massive cost and service shift to the county.

Moreover, about 37,000 county residents could lose federally funded in-home services that assist the aged, blind and disabled in their residences, thus avoiding costly institutionalized care.

“To me, this is pure discrimination,” said Evelia Vivar, 32, a legal immigrant from Mexico whose three children, like the offspring of many immigrants, are U.S.-born and therefore citizens. The Medi-Cal recipient, whose husband is a $6-an-hour factory hand, is expecting a fourth child.

The outspoken Vivar proudly notes that she has never applied for food stamps or welfare payments.

“We work and pay taxes too,” Vivar said after her checkup at the Eastside clinic.

Thousands of immigrant Medicaid recipients who are in nursing homes are especially vulnerable to the congressional cuts.

“It’s going to be disaster for our family,” said Frank Mashadian of Los Angeles.

His mother, Ghodart Nissan, 82, has been living in a nursing home for four years, Mashadian said. His family is among the many Persian Jews who have left Iran and come to Southern California in recent years. But, Mashadian says, neither he nor his two sisters can afford to pay his mother’s extensive medical bills. It is not the family’s fault, he says, that his mother became infirm--a sentiment voiced by many relatives.

“I don’t even have health insurance for my own family,” said Mashadian, a salesman and father of two who says business hasn’t been so good.

Like Mashadian, Ayzik Davidovich has also been pondering the implications of the congressional action.

“This could kill me,” said Davidovich, an intense man with a deep, world-weary gaze.

As a boy, Davidovich survived the Holocaust, escaping when the Nazis overran his native Ukraine. Almost half a century later, a stint treating patients after the disastrous nuclear accident at Chernobyl helped end his career as a pediatrician, says Davidovich, who blames the radiation for aggravating his asthma.

Now 67, Davidovich, one of the thousands of Jews who left the former Soviet Union and settled in and near West Hollywood, says his $626 in monthly SSI payments is a lifeline.

Those emigrating from the former Soviet Union, he said, were forced to leave most of their assets behind. If he and others had known that U.S. financial support might not be available, Davidovich added, maybe they would have thought twice about coming.

The former physician has two daughters here, also Soviet emigres, but Davidovich says they have their own families and cannot afford to support him.

“I don’t want to be a burden,” Davidovich said during an interview at the offices of the Bet Tzedek legal services agency on Fairfax Avenue.

“I understand that they’re trying to balance the budget,” he added, “but before you cut, you think. You think about what this does to people.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Rising SSI Rolls

The number of noncitizens in the U.S. receiving Supplemental Security Income, a program for the elderly, disabled and blind, has increased more than sixfold since 1982, to more than 785,000 today. That figure is expected to approach 1 million by 2000.

2000 (projected): 990,142

Source: Social Security Administration and congressional General Accounting Office

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Immigrant Welfare Reform

The welfare legislation in Congress curtails legal immigrants’ rights to dozens of social service programs, while further narrowing benefits for illegal immigrants and other noncitizens. The House and Senate versions have some differences. Lawmakers are crafting a compromise that is expected to reach President Clinton this week. The proposal:

* Bans most immigrants from receiving food stamps and Supplemental Security Income (for the aged, disabled and blind) until they become U.S. citizens or have worked here 10 years. The House version also bars most immigrants from Medicaid, the federal health plan for the poor.

* Subjects future arrivals to a five-year ban on scores of other federal programs for the needy. It also makes affidavits of support from sponsors, usually relatives, legally binding until citizenship.

* Gives states the power to deny certain federally funded benefits to immigrants who have lived here five years. Included is Aid to Families With Dependent Children, now the nation’s largest cash-welfare outlay. The proposal also authorizes states to disqualify immigrants from state-funded programs.

* Creates a new category--”not a qualified alien”--that combines millions of illegal immigrants with tens of thousands of noncitizens who are authorized to live and work temporarily in the country. They will be barred from most public benefits, grants, contracts, loans or licenses.

* Requires agencies administering affected federal programs to verify immigrant eligibility through a computer database; certain agencies must provide the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service with quarterly reports on illegal immigrants encountered. No state or local government may restrict the flow of information to the INS--a measure directed at Los Angeles and other cities that have limited police and other official cooperation with the INS.

* May, for the first time, bar illegal immigrants and others deemed unqualified from child nutrition programs, including school lunches.