Family Ponders End of Government Help

Their lunch was simple: a pot of rice, a bowl of fried tofu, a plate of lettuce. Some fish sauce to give the meal flavor.

A typical meal for Oanh Pham, Hue Nguyen and their three young children. With an $806 monthly welfare check that barely covers their $750 rent, and $300 worth of food stamps to stretch over a month, the Westminster couple really can’t afford much more.

Pham and Nguyen could only look at each other in horror when President Clinton announced last week he would sign a welfare reform bill that would cut back eligibility for food stamps and deny most welfare benefits to legal immigrants.

But their unspoken feelings were very clear: How would they feed their three children?

“Right now, with $300 of food stamps, this is what we have,” Nguyen said one afternoon, opening her freezer, which contained a bag of chicken bones for soup stock, three cans of frozen orange juice and ice trays. The refrigerator didn’t offer much more: bags of lettuce, tofu and some fish.

“It’s such a big shame for us to tell you these things,” the 43-year-old woman continued. “But there’s no use in glossing over the truth. We don’t have much and we’re doing the best we can. We don’t know what’s going to happen if the welfare and food stamps are cut tomorrow.”

The legislation, approved by Congress last week, would eliminate eligibility for most government aid programs until legal immigrants become citizens. No details are yet available on how many people will be affected by the reform, when it will take effect and how much of their entitlements will be cut.

But Orange County officials have said as many as 22,000 legal immigrants, many of them poor or disabled, could be affected. Many are expected to turn to their counties’ meager general relief programs as a last resort.

The cuts threaten the very survival of Pham, Nguyen and their family, who emigrated from Vietnam in 1993 and do not receive county aid.

When the food stamps arrive at the beginning of the month, the couple carefully parcels out the vouchers, making sure that they first buy a big bag of rice, two bottles of fish sauce and salt.

That way, if they run out of food stamps for meat, fish, vegetables and fruit by the end of the month, they have staples to see them through.

“No matter how hard things are, we always make sure that we feed the children, that they are never hungry,” said Pham, 49. “But look at the kind of food we’re talking about,” he added, pointing to the rice, tofu and lettuce arranged neatly on the table. “We owe our children many apologies.”

They are not proud of being in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, the couple said. “We didn’t come here to take advantage of the system,” Pham said.

Both said they have had difficulties finding jobs because of medical problems. Pham, who spent seven years in a prison camp in Vietnam, has kidney damage and suffers from chronic dizziness and muscle paralysis. Last year, he got a job as a gardener but passed out from exhaustion on his first day on the job.

Nguyen, 43, is still recovering from stomach problems from a difficult childbirth two years ago.

Neither speaks English, compounding the difficulty in finding employment, they said.

The couple has not bought any clothing since arriving in 1993 with their children, aged 8, 7, and 2. Their clothes, furniture and cookware were all donated by churches or friends in the Vietnamese community.

They have a 1983 car, but no insurance on it. Nguyen doesn’t do the laundry at the apartment complex where the family lives because the washers and dryers are small and cost $1.75 per load. She either hand-washes some of the linen or walks to the laundry down the street, where, for $2.50, she can wash a larger quantity of clothing.

No lights are used until after dark. To keep from buying the more expensive lightbulbs for the built-in chandelier in their apartment, Pham taped and jury-rigged a round neon tube to the base of the light fixture.

“Eleven hundred dollars a month is not much, so we have to do what we can to get by,” Nguyen explained almost apologetically as she pointed to the neon light, which was turned on one afternoon this week because there was a family friend visiting that day.

The couple made it a point to emphasize that they don’t want to complain about their standard of living. Nor do they expect anything from the American government, because they are “thankful already for the new opportunities” they have been given.

Because of her husband’s deteriorating health, Nguyen knows the financial burden of taking care of her family will one day fall on her shoulders. She has enrolled in English class. And the past few weeks have found her going to sweatshops in Little Saigon to learn sewing.

“It’s sad that that’s about the only thing I can do in this country for now,” said Nguyen, a former first-grade teacher in Vietnam. “But we can’t sit around and feel sorry for ourselves and complain. We knew it [welfare reform] was going to happen. Now, we just need to prepare somehow.”

Her husband added: “My wife and I know we will get by. If we can’t do big things to survive, then we will do small things. If the small things are too difficult to do, then, we will turn to the smaller things. If the [welfare] money is taken away, yes, life would be hard. But we do have some time to prepare. We just have to adapt.”