Wilson Adds Voice to Call for Aid for Some Immigrants

Gov. Pete Wilson on Sunday joined fellow state executives in calling on Congress to provide new help for some legal immigrants who will lose benefits under last year’s welfare reform bill, but he insisted that the fundamentals of the law should not be revisited.

“There is a problem here, no one disputes that,” Wilson said. “But I don’t think it requires reopening the [welfare] act.”

Wilson made his remarks during an interview at the meeting of the National Governors’ Assn., where a bipartisan panel of governors voted to call on Congress and the White House to find a way to help legal immigrants who are so disabled or elderly that they are unable to apply for citizenship.

That recommendation, which would apply only to those immigrants who were legally in the country when the welfare law was enacted in August 1996, would affect about 45,000 people in California, Wilson estimated.

According to California officials, about 87,000 noncitizens statewide are expected to lose benefits from the Supplemental Security Income program, which aids elderly, blind and disabled people. Federal estimates, however, put that number at 200,000 in California, including almost 100,000 in L.A. County alone. At least 270,000 legal immigrants would lose food stamps, the state says.

In addition to calling for aid for the severely disabled and elderly, the governors’ resolution urged Congress to consider restoring certain benefits to legal immigrants who are waiting for their citizenship applications to be processed.

Wilson’s remarks, in the interview and a news conference after the resolution was adopted, were his first public statement in the controversy that has split his fellow Republicans in recent weeks.

The compromise adopted by the governors’ panel, which is expected to be accepted Tuesday by the full association, increases pressure on Congress to backtrack on some of the welfare cuts approved last year--although not as pointedly as some governors wanted.

At issue is the landmark 1996 welfare law that set up a block grant program giving new power to the states to design and run their own welfare programs. The law also set new work requirements for welfare recipients, imposed a five-year limit on benefits and cut off aid for legal immigrants--even those already in the country when the measure was signed.

The immigrant-aid cutoff was controversial at the time the legislation was enacted. The governors’ association strongly backed the overall bill but took no position on the immigrant benefits issue. No state is more deeply affected by the issue than California, which is home to 40% of all immigrants residing in the United States.

The immigrant cutoff has been a flash point at the four-day meeting of the governors’ association. The compromise adopted by the committee Sunday represented an effort to heal a rift between those governors--mostly Democrats and some Republicans from states with large immigrant populations--who wanted a restoration of immigrant benefits to ease the financial burden some states now face, and Republicans who feared reopening the messy political debate over welfare reform. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and other Republicans in Congress worked hard to keep the governors’ association from calling for major changes in the welfare law.

The compromise resolution calls on Congress and the Clinton administration to ensure that the law “meets the needs of aged and disabled legal immigrants who cannot naturalize and whose benefits may be affected.” It adds that “an equitable solution” could be reached without changing the welfare law.

Exactly what that means is unclear, but Wilson and other governors suggested that Congress could help severely disabled immigrants by providing a special appropriation or block grant to states that have large immigrant populations.

Lott is scheduled to address the governors’ meeting today and is expected to call for establishment of a task force of governors and members of Congress to review the issue. Wilson expects to be named to the task force, according to his spokesman, Sean Walsh.

After speaking to Lott on the telephone Sunday morning, Wilson said he thought the Senate leader “was willing to work with us” to address the problem. But he acknowledged that it will be difficult to squeeze money out of Congress at a time when lawmakers are trying to balance the budget.

Because the debate on legal immigrants’ benefits has such broad implications for California, some governors have been puzzled by Wilson’s low profile on the issue. He has been on a trade mission for the last three weeks as the issue has been argued.

Wilson said at his news conference that he had expressed concerns about the immigrant-aid cutoff when Congress was debating the measure, but that his views were not widely known.

Times staff writer Patrick J. McDonnell contributed to this story.

* INS BACKLOG

The wait to become a citizen is growing at a time when many face a benefit cutoff. A3