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Welfare policy for immigrants criticized




By Christian Bourge

UPI Think Tank Correspondent

Published 2/28/2002 12:19 PM




WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 (UPI) -- A proposal to restore food stamp benefits for immigrants who are not U.S. citizens, made on Tuesday by the White House, has think-tank analysts across the ideological spectrum criticizing not only the idea, but also the ability of the administration of President George W. Bush to produce a coherent and effective immigration policy.



It indicates the lack of a comprehensive approach to the immigration issue, which is consistent to the homeland security response to immigration as well, Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, told United Pres International.



The proposal to restore to non-citizen immigrants the same eligibility for food stamp benefits that they had prior to the enactment of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was a surprise for some liberal-leaning policy experts, who had hoped the White House would propose to roll back a greater portion of the limitations that the law placed on the access of immigrants to welfare. The proposal is part of a larger plan for renewing the expiring PRWORA that faces a contentious debate on Capitol Hill.



With the White House courting the highly valued Hispanic vote for the 2004 election, some analysts had hoped the administration might propose a stronger rollback of these limits in an effort to please this bloc of voters who are sensitive to the issue.



These experts also believed the administration might even propose to allow benefits for all children of poor immigrants under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Budget watchers, however, doubted this possibility, given the lack of available funds for such an expensive proposition in the wake of the economic downturn which has been accelerated by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.



Michael Fix, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute's Population Studies Center, said that despite early indications that the administration could embrace stronger rollbacks to the 1996 welfare reforms, the White House's tone is now different.



They seem to be emphasizing the fact that they are leaving the bars in place, though they are restoring some benefits to immigrants, he said. I was certainly surprised. It probably changes the mood of the people who were proposing expansion (of benefits), from one that is more hopeful to one in which they realize that the administration is not interested, with the exception of food stamps.



Title IV of PRWORA was revolutionary in that it strongly limited the access of immigrants to welfare benefits, and established an elaborate scheme to determine their eligibility. This departed from years of policy by putting citizenship at the center of welfare requirements.



Though it generally tied benefits to the willingness to work, for certain legal immigrants and citizens the law also transferred to states the power to decide the eligibility of immigrants. It also made it next to impossible for those arriving in the United States after the law's enactment to receive benefits.



According to an analysis of the U.S. government's Current Population Surveys for 1995 and 2000 conducted by Fix and fellow Urban Institute principal research associate Jeffrey Passel, the law has been effective in blocking the use of public benefits by non-citizen immigrants. Their study, The Scope and Impact of Welfare Reform's Immigrant Provisions, published by the Urban Institute, found a substantial decline between 1994 and 1999 in by legal immigrants of all the major benefit programs. These include a 15 percent decline in Medicaid use; a 32 percent decline in Supplemental Security Income use; a 48 percent decline in food stamp use; and a 60 percent decline in use of the TANF program.



Fix and Passel found this trend nationwide, though it was most prominent among poor families in states where the benefits for immigrants were the lowest, and which had rapidly increasing immigrant populations. The decline in benefit use was not accompanied by increased rates of naturalization or rising incomes for immigrant families, an effect predicted by some proponents of the reforms.



Though they consider the administration's food stamp proposal to be minimal, conservatives still view it as a move in the wrong direction.



I think the immigration and welfare proposals (made by Bush) are very bad, said Robert Rector, senior researcher and welfare expert at the conservative Washington-based Heritage Foundation. Essentially what they are saying is that you can come to the United States and never work a day and get welfare, he said. Immigrants can come to the United States and have a few kids out of wedlock and we will support them on welfare.



Rector said that the proposed policy ignores the basic concepts inherent to the 1996 law that linked work to receiving benefits, because it contains no work requirement in order to qualify for food stamp benefits.



The fundamental problem is that the proposal would remove work history requirements for immigrants, so whether or not an individual has contributed to the economy, they can get a government handout, he said. I think immigrants need a record of private employment and contribution to the economy before you start feeding them on welfare.



Krikorian described the Bush administration's proposal as reflective of a problematic libertarian approach to immigration that keeps the door open for immigrants while limiting their ability to get government assistance.



Neither the leftist approach -- which is high immigration and open arms to immigrants -- nor the libertarian approach of high immigration but a cold shoulder for them, makes sense, he said. What I would like to see the administration do is act on the difference between immigration policy and immigrant policy by embracing a pro-immigrant policy of lower immigration, he said.



He added that an approach limiting the number of immigrants allowed into the country each year, while providing them strong benefits, was not only politically feasible but also most likely to resonate with the public.



The problem is that the elitists don't subscribe to it, he said. It is this option which has not been explored because nobody is making money from it and nobody gains emotional satisfaction by articulating it.



He added that the White House's plan seemed like the administration was splitting the difference between pleasing Bush's Republican base of support by not making any massive changes to the law, while throwing a bone to immigrant rights groups.



Rector agreed that issues outside of the immigration policy debate--such as the need to garner Hispanic votes in key states like Florida in 2004 -- were at least part of the reason for the proposal.



I think there are some people in the administration that think this will be popular with certain groups of voters, said Rector.



He added, however, that the proposal was likely to garner criticism from members of the House leadership, given the strong party support for linking work history to the receipt of benefits.



Krikorian said that overall, the proposed food stamp program rollback, and the weak administration proposals to address the immigrant security problems that came to light following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, demonstrate the Bush White House's failures in this policy arena.



There also really hasn't been a cogent comprehensive approach to immigration and the homeland security problem, he said, adding that it took until nearly two months after the attacks for Bush to even talk about immigration, and that the administration has only taken very small, very tentative steps to address the issue.



According to Fix, there is no point within immigration policy where welfare reform is integrated with and homeland security.



These things are on a different track, said Fix.



But Krikorian cited Bush's January speech on U.S. border control, made at a Coast Guard installation, as an example of the lack of substantive proposals from the White House. He said this was indicative of the administration's fear of talking about immigration issues due to a lack of comprehensive understanding.



This, he said, was why the White House garnered heat from Congress, the press and various special interest groups when they floated the idea of granting amnesty to illegal Mexican immigrants last summer.



We are talking about stuff that nobody (in the administration) really knows about, said Krikorian. They understand now that they don't know too much about immigration and they are trying to learn. That is the first step, but they still don't have a comprehensive approach to immigration in the way they do to missile defense, where there is a well articulated body of policy proposals that all hang together. That is not just Bush. Clinton didn't know (anything about immigration) either.



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