Thread: Food Stamps Program Often Rigged to Benefit Illegal Aliens

Food Stamps Program Often Rigged to Benefit Illegal Aliens



11 Jul 2016

A report issued by the non-partisan Center for Immigration Studies finds that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) — commonly known as food stamps — oftentimes disproportionately benefits families that include illegal aliens over all-citizen families.

In most states, families including illegal aliens can receive more taxpayer-funded benefits, because many states will ignore an ineligible alien’s income when calculating, or prorating, the family’s total income. An illegal alien’s earnings won’t count towards the income cap, allowing “mixed” families to potentially collect more benefits than they would if they were all U.S. citizens.

“The proration formula is inherently unfair to the citizen family (or a family of eligible green card holders) as the system gives tax dollars to one family and not the other because the benefitting family has an ineligible alien as the breadwinner. It is biased against those here legally, and biased in favor of those whose presence is against the law (or who have secured their green cards quite recently),” CIS fellow David North writes.

Incidentally, this strange arrangement only benefits the better-off families including ineligibles; in the case of a family of three it would allow mixed families with incomes of more than $30,000 a year to receive benefits. Proration does not create opportunities to receive benefits for really low income mixed families, as they are eligible already. A further irony is that politicians have accepted this bias in favor of a population that not only includes no voters, it includes very few people who will vote in the next five to 10 years.

Few people are aware of, let alone understand, this unusual situation. While SNAP is a national program, states and counties add more complications to determining exactly how much families, including those with illegal aliens, can receive. CIS suggests bringing it to governors’ attention with a pointed question:

“As you may or may not know, the state administration, in the food stamps program, has taken a bizarre position that it is easier for families with illegal aliens as the wage earners to get food stamps than for all-citizen families. In these cases the wages of illegal aliens are not fully counted when food stamps eligibility is calculated, while the citizen’s wages are always counted. Do you support this overt bias against citizen families? Your office can change the policy.”

Estimates regarding the size of the illegal alien population in the U.S. range from 11 million to 30 million, making the impact of the program’s formula significant. California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois have the largest illegal alien populations.

“Chances are the governor does not have a clue about the subject, but he or she may call the appropriate cabinet member and change may ensue,” North writes. “Thus, state legislators, the governors, and the state house press might be contacted in an effort to eliminate this strange, anti-citizen governmental program.”

Third World immigrants, especially illegal aliens, cost the American taxpayer enormous amounts of money each year in welfare, crime, healthcare, and education expenses. Immigrant-headed households use 41 percent more welfare than native households. All illegal alien minors are entitled to a taxpayer-funded education in U.S. schools thanks to a liberal Supreme Court ruling, Plyler v. Doe (1982), which also unilaterally grants U.S. citizenship to anchor babies, encouraging further illegal immigration and contributing to ballooning welfare costs.

Continuing surges of illegal immigration from Central America will cost over $1 billion in 2017, with American taxpayers projected to shell out $17,613 per unaccompanied illegal alien minor smuggled into the country in 2017.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...llegal-aliens/

US

Illegal Aliens Receive Food Stamp Preference Over Citizens In 44 States


3:03 PM 07/11/2016


Rosa Ayala, joined nearly 2500 marchers during a rally demanding immigration reform on September 2, 2006 in Los Angeles, California. The rally was organized in support of Elvira Arellano, an illegal immigrant in Chicago, Illinois who found sanctuary in her local church to avoid deportation. (Photo by J. Emilio Flores/Getty Images) ∧

The federally funded food stamp program has policies in place that benefit families with one or more illegal immigrant wage earners over American citizens. Only six states have policies in place that prevent this.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) published a report on this loophole Monday. Illegal immigrants themselves are not eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), but their children are.

“Let’s say that the all-citizen family consisted of three people, employed father, stay-at-home mother, and a small child. Dad makes $2,400 a month. The family’s income is too high for food stamps since the maximum monthly income is $2,177 for a family of three,” David North, a fellow at CIS and author of the report, wrote.

“Then next door there is a mixed family, also three people, with the father being the only worker, also earning $2,400 a month. The difference is that the father is an ineligible alien and so, under many states’ regulations, one-third of the family’s income is ignored (prorated is the word in SNAP circles), leaving the family with a nominal income of $1,600 a month that allows the family to get a food stamps allotment, but only for the two citizens, not for all three in the family.”

SNAP money is used for food in families that is presumably shared so the illegal immigrant gets the benefits.

A simple formula for SNAP proration is income multiplied by household size minus ineligible alien(s)/actual household size. This ends up meaning mixed-households, those with ineligible aliens, as having smaller listed incomes and thus being eligible for food stamps.

While SNAP is federally funded it is administered at a state-level and sometimes even at a county-level. “Of the states and territories, 47 have opted for proration and six have not. According to the most recent of SNAPs State Options Reports the six dissenters are Arizona, Guam, Massachusetts, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Utah,” the CIS report states.

The SNAP’s State Options Report leaves out Kansas of the “dissenters.” However, Kansas has enacted changes to its SNAP program to solve this proration problem. The 2015 HOPE Act in Kansas “requires the counting of income of non-citizens when determining SNAP benefits.”

North told The Daily Caller, “you have proved how confused this situation can be. Kansas is doing the right thing, and USDA does not know it.”

A Salvadoran father (R) carries his son while running next to another immigrant as they try to board a train heading to
the Mexican-U.S. border, in Huehuetoca, near of Mexico City, June 1, 2015. An increasing number of Central Americans
are sneaking across Mexico’s border en route to the United States. Picture taken June 1, 2015. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido



A U.S. Border Patrol agent walks past a rescue beacon near Falfurrias, Texas March 29, 2013. Brooks County has
become an epicentre for illegal immigrant deaths in Texas. In 2012, sheriff’s deputies found 129 bodies there, six times
the number recorded in 2010. Most of those who died succumbed to the punishing heat and rough terrain that comprise
the ranch lands of south Texas. Many migrants spend a few days in a “stash house”, such as the Casa del Migrante, in
Reynosa, Mexico, and many are ignorant of the treacherous journey ahead. Picture taken March 29, 2013.
REUTERS/Eric Thayer

Ineligible aliens for SNAP are not just illegal immigrants but also those who have had a green card for less than five years. The CIS estimated that over $1.4 billion annually in federal taxpayer benefits are paid out to mixed-households.

Some groups — like the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights — openly promote how proration unequally benefits illegal aliens. It lists the SNAP monthly household income limit for a family of 3 as $1,984. “But for mixed status families, these same income limits do not apply,” the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee writes.

It has previously been reported that the U.S government has worked with the Mexican government to promote SNAP eligibility to illegal aliens.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/11/il...#ixzz4EFMeKGqu