What new welfare debate sounds like in Wonderland
January 17, 2002
DALLAS -- President Bush might think that making it easier for legal immigrants to get food stamps is appropriate fare for a compassionate conservative. But that depends on whether one believes that getting newcomers hooked on government handouts is compassionate or cruel.
I'll take the latter. I still have a hard time swallowing the idea of food stamps and other welfare benefits for native-born Americans, let alone immigrants.
It's not that I think any less of the foreigners. Quite the contrary. Most who come to the United States, legally or otherwise, make incredible sacrifices to get here. And because the price of admission to this country is so high, immigrants come with an ambition that should be preserved at all costs.
What the administration has in mind could spoil that. Acting with either the best of intentions or the worst of political advice, Bush wants to use legislation intended to overhaul farm policy as a means of diving into two controversial issues: welfare and immigration. The president wants to revisit a provision of the 1996 welfare reform act that bars legal immigrants from applying for food stamps until they have lived in the country for 10 years.
That provision had the effect of pushing as many as 800,000 noncitizens off food stamps, claims the administration.
Bush wants to move the threshold to five years, a change that will, the White House claims, restore food stamps to an estimated 363,000 noncitizens by 2006.
That is much more generous than a competing proposal in the Senate supported by many Democrats, which would restore benefits to just 150,000 legal immigrants. Capitol Hill observers say the motivation behind the lower figure comes from Democratic fears that more money for food stamps to immigrants will mean less money for subsidies to farmers.
Did you catch that? After demonizing Republicans with regard to both welfare and immigration, Democrats now have a chance to back up their fear-mongering with votes to give welfare to immigrants. They decline, preferring to take care of a more powerful special interest.
And get this. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who led the charge in Congress for welfare reform in 1996, now says that, in retrospect, denying food stamps to immigrants was a bit much. Calling the ban "wrong," Gingrich now supports Bush's attempt to make it right.
That will cost money, Senate Democrats warn. Some of them are calling Bush's plan financially unsound, and they want to know how the administration is going to pay for the rollback, which the White House says will ring up at $2.1 billion over the next 10 years.
If you're keeping score, we have a Republican president offering welfare to immigrants, Newt Gingrich showing remorse for forcing immigrants off welfare, and Democrats expressing concern about government being fiscally responsible.
This must be what the welfare debate would sound like in Wonderland.
But the strangest thing is that anyone believes the spin. Because many of the noncitizens affected by Bush's proposal happen to be Hispanic, this is about generating Hispanic support for Bush in 2004.
Brilliant. If anyone believes that a significant number of Hispanics will be wooed by efforts to give welfare to immigrants, they need a refresher course about what matters to Hispanics.
The president has no worries on the Hispanic front. For reasons that have less to do with welfare than with war, Bush enjoys an 89 percent approval rating among Hispanics.
If those Hispanics are U.S.-born, chances are they harbor the same ambivalence about welfare giveaways as other Americans do. And if they are immigrants, they may even see government handouts as an insult. Study after study has confirmed that immigrants have a lower rate of participation in welfare programs than the native-born. Even with the 1996 immigrant ban in place, there are still more than 18 million Americans getting food stamps.
The really sad part about the plan to restore food stamps to immigrants is that Bush knows better. During his first year in office, the president has repeatedly praised immigrants for their work ethic and rightly acknowledged them as more benefit than burden. He was on a roll with a string of right answers. Now, he finally got one wrong.
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Navarrette is a Dallas Morning News columnist. Contact him via e-mail at rnavarrette@dallasnews.com.
Sure, as long as he doles out the windfalls. But come election time, the Dims will do their usual brilliant job of taking the credit, and the illegals and minorities will all vote Democrat.