UNITED STATES: Welfare Changes Could End Benefits for Immigrants

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Nov 10 1995 (IPS) - For the Republican-led U.S. Congress, restrictions on benefits to immigrants are just a small part of the complete overhaul it is planning for the U.S. welfare system.

But for immigrant groups, those restrictions could create two separate nations: one for native-born citizens with full benefits; and one which excludes immigrants — even if they are U.S. citizens — from public medical care, welfare, scholarships and housing programmes.

As the Senate and House of Representatives finalise welfare provisions that would sharply reduce immigrants’ access to public benefits, immigrant groups are worried that no one is speaking out on their behalf.

“The Senate bill for the first time would make second-class citizens of immigrants…even if they are naturalised citizens,” says Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Immigration Project of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE).

“I can’t believe that someone in 1995 has the guts to propose such legislation,” he argues. “What is the point of saying immigrant kids won’t get nutritional programmes, even if their parents pay taxes?”

For many immigrant rights groups, the most ominous feature of the legislation is that they would cut off a range of benefits — including student loans and grants, health care under Medicaid or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) — to legal immigrants.

SSI, which provides money for elderly and disabled poor people, is one of the largest welfare programmes in the United States, as are the Medicaid public-health programmes.

Currently, more than 700,000 legal immigrants receive SSI aid. More than a quarter of all people receiving SSI over the age of 65 are foreign-born.

The right-wing Republican Party, the bills’ major backers, argues that the government can save between 66 billion and 102 billion dollars over the next seven years by cutting such benefits to immigrants.

But their critics argue that the amount saved is minimal, while the discrimination that will result violates the constitutional rights of U.s. citizens to equal protection of the law.

“This would be the first time in history where you have one group with full citizenship benefits, and another without them,” notes Stanley Mark, programme director for New York’s Asian- American Legal Defense Fund. “We think it’s unconstitutional to create two classes of citizens.”

Ursula Levelt, policy director of the Centre for Immigrants’ Rights, adds that the welfare reform provisions are just part of a “total onslaught” against immigrants at the state and federal levels.

Part of that onslaught, she says, is an amendment sponsored by Nebraska Senator Jim Exon that would require all federal services to check the immigration status of the people they serve.

“We don’t like putting the police, fire department and teachers in the position of having to report on immigrants,” Marks argues. “It’s bad policy.”

Levelt adds that the Exon amendment could easily have a “chilling effect” by discouraging undocumented immigrants from seeking services — even medical help.

Many immigrant groups point to the political success of Proposition 187, a 1994 California referendum proposal to deny public services and benefits to all immigrant families, as the spark for the new measures. Proposition 187 was supported by nearly two-thirds of California voters, although parts of it has since been suspended due to legal challenges to its constitutionality.

“These ideas have a certain currency, unfortunately,” says Giev Kashkooli, New York manager of the United Farmworkers of America (UFW) union. Many politicians — including former presidential contender and California Governor Pete Wilson — have pandered to anti-immigration sentiment.

Part of the problem, Kashkooli notes, is that immigrants are perceived as freeloading off the U.S. welfare system — a belief he says is untrue.

“Most immigrants, and 93 to 94 percent of lawful permanent residents, never rely on any welfare benefits,” Chishti points out. One study last year found that immigrants as a whole pay some 25 billion to 27 billion dollars more in taxes than they take out in benefits, he adds.

President Bill Clinton’s administration also shares the belief the Republican-backed bills have gone too far. Clinton’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Donna Shalala, warned in an Oct 18 letter to Congressional leaders that the government “opposes the Senate provisions that would discriminate against U.S. citizens by denying benefits to legal immigrants even after they become naturalised citizens.”

Shalala also warned the bills’ backers not to “go too far in cutting benefits to legal immigrants” and to restrict such crucial programmes as SSI and student loans from immigrants.

That stance has fed the hopes of many immigrants’ rights groups that Clinton will veto the welfare reform bill when it is sent to him later this month. Clinton’s vocal opposition to the entire bill has increased recently, with The Washington Post noting Thursday that a new administration study has found the entire welfare package could push one million children into poverty.

But many activists worry that both Clinton and the Republicans see benefits for immigrants as a politically expedient way of government cost-cutting.

Mark says that, amid all the welfare changes being discussed on Capitol Hill, the immigrants’ concerns are not uppermost on the Clinton administration’s agenda. “My sense is this isn’t the top priority (Clinton) has in welfare reform,” he says.

But there is opposition to the harsh anti-immigrant measures, even among the Republicans. Top Republican officials — from Texas Governor Jeb Bush to New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani — have vowed not to prohibit services to immigrants even in the face of cut-off drives in their states. Now, immigrants’ rights groups hope those divisions may prove decisive in sinking the current measures.

“It’s unconscionable that the United States could have a law to take away benefits from the people who feed the nation and clothe the nation,” says Kashkooli. Many agricultural and textile workers, he notes, are immigrants.