U.S. Seeks to Spur Use of Aid by Immigrants

The Clinton administration plans to unveil long-awaited but controversial rules today that officials say should help tens of thousands of legal immigrants seek publicly financed health, nutrition and other aid without fear of deportation or other consequences.

“This new regulation will improve the health of our families by addressing widespread confusion that prevents legal immigrants from signing up for health insurance, school lunch, child care and other essential programs,” said Vice President Al Gore, who is scheduled to announce the guidelines during a stop in Texas.

The changes, effective immediately, are designed to quell a persistent fear in the immigrant community from California to Florida to New York that applying for public benefits can put applicants--even legal immigrants--on the road to deportation.

Stoking the fears are incidents in which federal and state authorities have cited immigrants’ past use of aid in attempts to deport them or bar them from bringing relatives from abroad. The new rules would explicitly ban use of such noncash aid against immigrants.

The widespread fear in the immigrant community, health professionals say, has resulted in broad underutilization of many initiatives, including Medicaid (Medi-Cal in California, the federal-state health insurance plan for the poor) and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Healthy Families in California, for uninsured youth).

Some people even avoid immunizations and treatment of communicable diseases, officials say, which threatens to undermine the nation’s public health regimen and spread contagious illnesses.

The changes, to be announced after months of intense debate within the White House, come after several studies documented a steep decline in receipt of benefits among immigrants.

A report released in March by the Urban Institute, a Washington research organization, found that welfare use by noncitizen households plummeted 35% between 1994 and 1997. That was more than double the 15% drop among citizens. The decline was even sharper in Los Angeles County, one of the nation’s principal immigrant magnets.

The Urban Institute found the drop was largely linked to the “chilling effects” of efforts to link benefit eligibility to immigration status. Community health care workers have seen the fear first-hand.

“Even women with very high-risk pregnancies are scared to death to ask for aid that they are entitled to,” said Lynn Kersey of Maternal and Child Health Access, a nonprofit group in Los Angeles.

Officials of California and other states have pressed the Clinton administration to clarify the matter, as have activists with Latino groups and other immigrant lobbies.

The change--and the fact that the new rules are being announced by Gore, a presidential aspirant--once again underscores how the atmosphere in Washington has become considerably more pro-immigrant since 1996, when Congress severely cut noncitizen access to public benefits as part of its landmark welfare overhaul.

“The administration has learned, and in many ways politicians in general have learned, that they do well politically when they do the right things for immigrants,” said Cecilia Munoz, vice president for policy for the National Council of La Raza.

Although Latino organizations and allied groups praised the changes, activists seeking reductions of immigration levels were expected to be harshly critical.

“These rules will increase the number of immigrants on welfare who will be able to bring in more immigrants to go on welfare and are an insult to all Americans--native born and immigrant,” said U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who heads the House immigration subcommittee.

The regulations do not make anyone newly eligible for benefits.

Rather, the move provides specific direction to federal agencies, including the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the State Department, that have the responsibility of determining whether immigrants and potential immigrants are a likely “public charge,” or a drain on public resources. Officials regularly interview immigrants seeking permanent resident status and citizenship.

For more than 100 years, a person’s likelihood to become a public charge has been a ground for inadmissibility and deportation. But, until now, there has been no precise definition of the term.