State Restored Most Aid Noncitizens Lost in ’96

Despite its anti-immigrant reputation, California has been among the most generous of the 50 states in providing public aid to needy noncitizens who lost benefits in the 1996 federal welfare overhaul, a new study shows.

The analysis by the Urban Institute found that California did more to provide food, money and health care to affected legal immigrants than New York, Florida or Texas--the three states with the largest numbers of immigrants after California.

“When looking across the four states with the biggest immigrant populations, California has done the most to restore benefits to legal immigrants,” said Wendy Zimmerman, senior research associate at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan, Washington, D.C.-based public policy research organization.

Experts say California’s seemingly contradictory attitudes about immigration and aid to immigrants underscore widespread mixed feelings about the state’s demographic transformation.

California, home to about one-third of the nation’s immigrants, passed ballot initiatives in this decade targeting illegal immigrants, affirmative action and bilingual education--campaigns that spread, in limited fashion, to other states.

“This is another example of the great ambivalence with which the public in California addresses one of the great social and economic changes ever in this state, which is the rapid immigration that has occurred over the past two decades,” said Mark Baldassare, survey director for the Public Policy Institute of California, an independent research group.

The new study, covering 1996-98, ranked California with nine states--including Illinois, Washington and Massachusetts--that were classified as “most generous” to noncitizens, based on efforts to make up for aid lost under the 1996 federal law.

Only California and Maine--which has relatively few immigrants--created four key new programs for needy legal immigrants: food stamps, medical insurance, cash welfare for families, and cash aid for the elderly and disabled.

The historic overhaul of the nation’s welfare system resulted in a vast difference between how the government treats its U.S. citizens and its noncitizen legal residents. The changes shifted broad authority to the states to decide whether to help legal immigrants. Even before the 1996 law, illegal immigrants were barred from most major government aid programs.

This year, California taxpayers are spending more than $100 million to provide both food assistance to about 89,000 legal immigrants and cash aid to another 5,000 elderly and disabled made ineligible for federal benefits. Just last week, the Assembly approved an expansion and extension of those aid efforts.

California’s effort to make up for immigrants’ lost benefits was the new study’s “most surprising finding,” the authors wrote.

A principal reason that the new aid won approval during the administration of former Gov. Pete Wilson is that it was clearly targeted for legal immigrants. The outcry from Wilson and others focused on illegal immigration. Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot initiative championed by Wilson, was aimed at denying services to illegal immigrants and speeding their deportation.

Architects of the aid programs crafted after the 1996 welfare law “used Wilson’s rhetoric about legal immigrants to force him to support programs for legal immigrants,” said Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), lead author of the new aid programs.

The state’s changing political landscape and the increasing clout of newly naturalized voters, especially Latinos, also boosted efforts to assist immigrants.

Democratic lawmakers who regained control of the Legislature in 1996 with the help of newly naturalized voters pushed hard to expand the safety net for legal immigrants.

“The state’s large and increasingly powerful immigrant community and advocacy network may not yet be affecting voter initiatives,” the study concluded, “but they are clearly being heard by the state Legislature and other policymakers.”

The study showed that most states with large immigrant populations restored substantial amounts of aid. The notable exception was Texas, which made the least-generous list, along with a scattering of less populous states with historically weak safety net programs.

The study found, however, that no state entirely replaced the benefits that immigrants lost under the welfare overhaul set down in the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.

Congress has since restored some eligibility, particularly for children and the elderly. The Clinton administration is backing proposals to restore more aid for legal immigrants.

What remains today, the study found, is a patchwork of federal and state policies that still leaves many legal immigrants in need.

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Aid for Immigrants

California was one of a few states to fund substantial new programs providing food, cash and health benefits for legal immigrants made ineligible for federal aid by the 1996 welfare overhaul. Following is a list of the states with the highest immigrant populations and the state programs created to help them.

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Cash welfare Cash for elderly State Food aid for families Medicaid and disabled California Yes Yes Yes Yes New York Yes No No No Florida Yes* No No No Texas Yes No No No New Jersey Yes No No No Illinois Yes No Yes Yes Massachusetts Yes Yes Yes No Arizona No No No No Michigan No No No No Maryland Yes Yes Yes No Virginia No No Yes No Washington Yes Yes Yes No

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* Program ended Oct. 31, 1998

Source: Urban Institute