Fear and Uncertainty : As Federal Welfare Rules Begin, Legal Immigrants Brace for the Worst

Socorro Cruz, a single mother who earns just over the minimum wage toiling on a plastics factory assembly line, was disappointed to learn this week that she no longer qualifies for food stamps. Cruz, a legal immigrant from Mexico, had hoped to use the $100 a month or so saved on groceries to buy new clothes for her 8-year-old son, whose photo is on her key chain.

“The little bit extra would have helped a lot,” a resigned Cruz said as she left the L.A. County Department of Public Social Services office in East Los Angeles after being told she was ineligible for the coupons.

With new federal welfare rules formally taking force this week, Cruz was one of the first of hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants in California who will be denied public benefits by next summer. The sweeping new welfare law bars most noncitizens from receiving aid including food stamps, the federally funded nutrition program for the poor.

Advocates of the changes say noncitizen residents should not be entitled to the same benefits as U.S. citizens. Opponents say the policy fosters destructive divisions in a society largely built by immigrants and their offspring.

The welfare downsizing probably hits no place harder than Los Angeles County, with the nation’s largest immigrant population, fraying the safety net for multitudes of families, many of them working poor like Cruz. Bureaucratic confusion has marked the the food stamp revisions.

While fears of an imminent cutoff have caused near panic in some quarters, the congressional budget bill signed into law this week provided clarification. No current legal immigrant recipient is to lose food stamps because of their status until at least April 1. But all ineligible noncitizens must be off the food stamp rolls by Aug. 22.

The impact is most immediate for new applicants like Cruz. Legal immigrants who try to sign up for food stamps now in Los Angeles County are turned away, unless they qualify under one of several exceptions. Those exempted include veterans, active military personnel, refugees and those granted political asylum (both for five years only), and legal immigrants who have worked in the United States for 10 years.

Some California counties and most other states have yet to begin enforcing the ban on new applicants, while other areas are using varying guidelines, observers say. That has contributed to what Yolanda Vera, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, calls a “chaotic” process, resulting in improper denials. A lawsuit challenging the implementation scheme has been threatened.

As the new rules took effect Tuesday, fear and uncertainty were readily apparent inside the gloomy, bunker-like county welfare office on East Whittier Boulevard, a neighborhood where a barrage of new laws targeting noncitizens has reverberated.

Clients waiting in plastic chairs beneath the facility’s fluorescent lighting inevitably expressed bewilderment about the specific impact of the new laws, but most braced for the worst.

“Being an immigrant definitely puts you on the defensive now,” said an apprehensive Jose Macias, 27, a $6 an-hour worker in a chicken-packaging plant who was seeking to sign up his family of six for food stamps.

Yet many immigrant households will continue receiving some food stamps, albeit in reduced amounts. That is because they have U.S.-born children, who remain eligible.

In the case of Socorro Cruz, her California-born son will receive about $110 in monthly food stamps, authorities determined, even though she is no longer eligible.

Cruz’s case, however, illustrates the prevalence of bureaucratic confusion. Cruz was told she was ineligible even though she says she has worked in the United States since 1975, giving her well beyond the 10 years needed for an exemption.

The problem was that much of her salary was paid off the books--a common scenario with immigrants. Officials at the East Los Angeles welfare office credited applicants only for the periods in which Social Security taxes were taken out of their salaries, said administrative deputy Vivian Dudley.

Moreover, Dudley said her screeners require that noncitizen applicants demonstrate that they have been working in the United States legally for at least 10 years. That automatically disqualifies Ruiz and thousands of formerly illegal immigrants who did not gain lawful residence status until the federal amnesty program of 1987-88.

Yet those procedures in the East Los Angeles office run against county-wide guidelines, said Mary Robertson, county-wide program deputy for the food stamps. County authorities plan to contact each welfare office today to clarify the situation, Robertson explained.