Food-Stamp Cutoff for Legal Immigrants Will Be Delayed

Searching for ways to delay the loss of government aid, Los Angeles County has come up with a bureaucratic maneuver that will allow 150,000 poor legal immigrants to continue receiving food stamps until September despite federal directives that cutoffs begin in April.

County officials said they can delay the loss of food stamps by conducting a massive re-enrollment campaign for many of the immigrants just prior to the beginning of the scheduled cutoffs.

Officials in Orange and Ventura counties said Monday that they also hope to maintain benefits through August.

Orange County officials interpreted the mandate in a different way than did Los Angeles officials. They said they plan to notify legal immigrants who are found to be ineligible for benefits during the four-month period but will extend their benefits until Aug. 22. About 25,000 people will be affected.

“The fact that benefits aren’t to be ended is not being kept a secret,” said Angelo Doti, director of welfare reform planning. “Everyone pretty openly now says that the end of August is when it will happen.”

Under the new federal welfare law, about 1 million immigrants across the country are to be cut off from food stamps beginning in April. The terminations are to be completed in August.

For the Los Angeles strategy to be successful, officials acknowledged, many county employees may have to work overtime and some welfare offices could be kept open on nights and weekends.

But they maintain that the administrative hassle is a price they are willing to pay to keep poor immigrants in Los Angeles County on food stamps as long as possible.

“The county is opposed to legal immigrants losing food stamps,” said Phil Ansell, Los Angeles County welfare strategist, “so anything we can do within our obligations under the law to delay that, we want to do.”

Members of the Board of Supervisors applauded the plan. And state and federal officials said the Los Angeles strategy would not violate federal instructions for implementing food stamp cuts.

“I don’t think there’s anything to prevent Los Angeles County from doing that as long as they are able to handle everybody,” said Julie Andrews of the state’s food stamp policy bureau. “[But] it seems to me that’s going to be a huge workload, particularly for a county the size of Los Angeles.”

No state will be hit harder by the cutoffs than California, where an estimated 270,000 legal immigrants are expected to lose food assistance.

In California, the federally financed program provides free food to 3.2 million poor people, including families, single adults and children, as well as legal immigrants. To receive the stamps, recipients are certified on an annual basis and must prove they meet certain income thresholds.

The new federal law requires that beginning in April, as legal immigrants come up for recertification, they are to be systematically cut off the program.

But to avoid having to force some immigrants to lose food assistance earlier than others, Los Angeles County food stamp director Mary Robertson said, the county has decided to stage a mammoth re-enrollment in March to ensure that no one’s certification would expire in April, May, June or July.

That way, she said, the county could legally keep those immigrants on the rolls until the final deadline in August.

Ansell said the county also had been expected to use the four-month time period to review and terminate benefits for other immigrants whose food stamp certification expires later in the year. Instead, he said, the county decided they too would be reviewed in August so that no recipient would be cut from the rolls until the last possible moment.

Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors, said the maneuver is an example of how the county is finally beginning to apply innovative solutions to its most pressing problems.

“Most of these people we anticipate will become U.S. citizens, and it is absolutely ludicrous for the system to dump them from the [food stamp] rolls only to reestablish them months later,” said Yaroslavsky. “We are working within the law to avert a lot of hardship and human suffering, lots of [negative] economic impact for the communities where these people spend their food stamp money and administrative headaches for government itself.”

*

Supervisor Don Knabe, one of the board’s two conservatives, said the move makes sense on a number of levels. It allows the financially ailing county to maximize its use of already allocated federal food stamp dollars instead of trying to come up with the money itself. And it is a fairness issue for those tens of thousands of food stamp recipients whose “number” comes up at the beginning of the process.

“This would allow maximum time for that particular population to naturalize and become citizens” and qualify for food stamps under the new system, Knabe said. “It’s a matter of equal treatment for the entire population of food stamp recipients.”

In Los Angeles County, the review is expected to affect about 185,000 legal immigrants. Ansell said the county estimates that about 35,000 of those will qualify for exemptions, leaving 150,000 facing termination.

Under the federal law, immigrants are exempt from the cuts if they are veterans or members of the military, if they have worked 10 years in the United States or if they have held refugee status for less than five years.

The county’s decision to delay the food stamp cuts for legal immigrants is the second time in recent months that Los Angeles has taken action to delay or prevent recipients from losing food assistance.

In December, county officials announced that they would expand their work-for-welfare, or workfare, program so that single able-bodied adults could meet the work requirements of the new federal law. Under the law, single adults who aren’t working will lose food stamps after three months.

Ansell said the county’s latest strategy complies with a policy adopted unanimously by the Board of Supervisors that calls for the county to maximize federal revenue wherever possible. Furthermore, he said, the board has an established position “favoring no distinction in the treatment of legal immigrants and citizens in terms of eligibility for federal benefits.”

Frank Mecca, executive director of the County Welfare Directors Assn. of California, said he has heard that some other counties are considering copying Los Angeles’ strategy but he doesn’t know of any that have made a final decision to do it.

“The fact that [Los Angeles] has decided to do that really demonstrates the commitment on the part of L.A. County to help people as much as they possibly can because administratively it makes things much more difficult,” Mecca said. “It demonstrates a lot of compassion.”

In Ventura County, welfare officials said they are considering recertifying food stamp recipients so that they can keep their benefits until Aug. 22.

“We agree with Los Angeles County’s premise that there is an inequity in discontinuing people’s benefits at different times,” said Helen Reburn, deputy director of the Ventura County Public Social Services Agency.

But she said that county social service officials would not make a final decision until after they meet with state representatives in Sacramento on Wednesday. Ventura County has roughly 2,700 cases in which legal residents are receiving food stamps.

Advocates for the poor said they are urging other counties to follow Los Angeles’ strategy but many cannot handle the administrative burden it would put on them.

“This provision in the federal law had nothing to do with welfare reform,” said Laurie True, policy and research director for California Food Policy Advocates. “It was basically a budget cut and it’s tragic because it hits California so much harder than any other state.”

Times staff writers Josh Meyer in Los Angeles, Carlos Lozano in Ventura County and Lisa Richardson in Orange County contributed to this story.