Posted on 09/02/2015 6:51:34 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A new report by my colleague Steven Camarota finds that most immigrant households use welfare. That immigrants receive taxpayer-funded benefits at higher rates than the native-born isnt a new finding. But previous research (including by CIS) has never found such a high rate. The reason is that Camarota used a different Census Bureau data source, the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), that is more difficult to use but, as its name suggests, provides the most comprehensive view of welfare use (a.k.a program participation).
The study shows that 51 percent of immigrant-headed households use at least one welfare program, as opposed to 30 percent for households headed by the native-born. The study examined Medicaid, cash assistance, food aid, and housing programs. The graph below shows overall welfare use for immigrant and native households.
Weve been doing this long enough to anticipate the objections from immigration sentimentalists:
But its only illegals! Actually, three-fourths of the immigrant households using welfare are headed by a legal immigrant. Illegal aliens are indeed included in the SIPP, and they do often receive welfare benefits on behalf of U.S.-born children, but this is not a problem that can be solved simply with a fence, a wall, or any other form of enforcement.
But immigrants are hard workers! No doubt, but welfare and work are not mutually exclusive. The report found that half of immigrant households with one or more workers still accessed the welfare system. Among those working-households headed by an immigrant who did not have a high school education, an astonishing 77 percent accessed welfare, as did 64 percent of working households headed by an immigrant with only a high school education.
This is because the entire welfare system is designed to help low-wage workers, especially those with children, and this describes a very large share of immigrant households. For example, a household consisting of a mother with two kids working full-time earning $12 a hour is still eligible for just about every welfare program.
Its for the children! As the preceding suggests, much of welfare is intended to benefit kids; thats the main way that illegal immigrants, in particular, receive welfare benefits. Fully 62 percent of immigrant households that have children feed those children, at least at school, with taxpayer money. One might ask why are we admitting people hundreds of thousands more every year who cant even afford to feed their own children? But immigration-booster Linda Chavez, who commented on our study in todays USA Today story, predictably responded with the liberal argument that welfare is an investment: These kids who get subsidized school lunches today will go on to graduate high school will go on to college and move up to the middle class of America. Well, then, the more investment the better! Lets give everyone welfare!
And anyway, even if you dont count free and subsidized school lunch, welfare use is still at 46 percent for immigrant households.
Its only recent immigrants! Linda also tried this retort in the USA Today story, saying, in the reporters words, that immigrants start off poorer and have lower levels of education, making it unfair to compare their welfare use to the long-established native-born population. Even though she was provided a copy of the report for comment, it appears she didnt get to the second bullet on the first page, which notes that even among households headed by an immigrant whos been here more than twenty years, about half use welfare.
Lets wall off the welfare system! Good luck with that. We tried that in the 1996 welfare reform, and the results of that social experiment are in. The broader welfare reform measures really did work, but the attempt at differentiating between poor people based on place of birth didnt. Theres a short appendix at the end of our new welfare report, starting on page 25, which explains why. Its enlightening reading for those who think subtly calibrated policies negotiated in Congress can be successfully implemented if they go against the grain of liberal bureaucracies.
Some of the highlights: While immigrants in theory can be deported for becoming a public charge, it never happens; in all of 2012 there was just one investigation of an immigrant under this provision, and it was dropped. In figuring who is a public charge, only cash benefits are counted; so that an immigrant family living in public housing, receiving food stamps, free school lunch, and Medicaid is considered self-sufficient! The requirement that new legal immigrants turn to their sponsors if they need help, not the welfare system deeming in the jargon contains an indigent exception; in other words, if youre poor enough the welfare bar doesnt apply, negating the entire purpose of the bar.
The restrictions on immigrant welfare use also dont work as intended because they apply only to a modest share of immigrants; some programs arent restricted; state governments often cover immigrants with their own money; there are numerous exceptions and exemptions; and some provisions are simply unenforced.
Practically and politically, its nearly impossible to keep poor immigrant families off the welfare system once they are in the country. This isnt a moral failing; the fact that immigrant households are about 60 percent more likely to use welfare than natives doesnt mean theyre 60 percent worse. Rather, theyre less educated, thus earn less money, thus qualify for a wide variety of taxpayer-funded services. Theres simply no way to allow less-educated workers into the country to fill low-wage jobs without creating enormous welfare costs for taxpayers.
The only answer is to stop admitting so many poor immigrants. When youre in a hole, stop digging.
I’ll bet the number is even higher for ILLEGAL immigrants.
Chavez would say nothing if the immigrants were easter european whites.
Nothing but a bigot, obsessed with helping “her people”
Interesting wording. "Headed" by a legal immigrant. It makes me wonder what percentage of the members of these households are actually illegal themselves.
Another rose colored open-borders lie bites the dust.
Here’s the thing the Left doesn’t understand about Americans who work, and receive no public assistance.
At work, they compete in a global economy where the deck is stacked against them, whether in terms of cheap labor, intellectual property protection, or the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Then they come home from work and have to pay attention to politics because the Left is competing against them in the domestic economy— will they get to keep the money they have earned, or will it be siphoned off by the parasitic class through government action?
People are pissed.
It hasn't worked that way for the last 40 years, but it's BOUND to start happening any day now - all we need is MORE of your money!
More acts of love.
That’s why they came here you silly.
Cut the bennies and they will quit coming and leave; no deportation necessary.
Exactly. We don’t need to “round ‘em up!”. Cut them off and they will leave.
Can it be done?
Back during the great depression, Herbert Hoover ordered the deportation of ALL illegal aliens in order to make jobs available to American citizens that desperately needed work.
Harry Truman deported over two million illegal aliens after WWII to create jobs for returning veterans.
In 1954 Dwight Eisenhower deported 13 million Mexicans. The program was called Operation Wetback. It was done so WWII and Korean War veterans would have a better chance at jobs.
from link:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3331918/posts
If we have the will it can be done.
All these years thinking she was a conservative. In the article it mentions Chavez as a “self-professed” conservative, but hey aren’t all RINOS self-professed conservatives anyways.
Hard to cut them off if they are legal immigrants and US citizens.
Where did you get that number? Way too high.
That’s why we need “immigrant reform”. If you come here to ride the backs of U.S. taxpayers, we throw your ass out.
E-Verify that actually works and enforce it.
Meaningful prison time for employers hiring illegals.
Some business models are built around the cheap labor.
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