Thread: Obama USDA met 30 times with Mexican gov’t to promote food-stamp use among Mexican im

Obama USDA met 30 times with Mexican gov’t to promote food-stamp use among Mexican immigrants.
By Caroline May Published: 2:15 AM 10/01/2012



Department of Agriculture personnel in the Obama administration have met with Mexican Government officials dozens of times since the president took office to promote nutrition assistance programs — notably food stamps — among Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals and migrant communities in America.

Writing in response to Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions’ July request for information about the USDA’s little known partnership with the Mexican government to educate citizen and noncitizen immigrants from Mexico about the availability of food stamps and other nutrition assistance programs, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack defended the partnership as a way to curb hunger in America — and the continuation of a program formed under the Bush administration in 2004.

“The Mexico-U.S. Partnership for Nutrition Assistance Initiative is just one of a wide range of USDA partnership activities intended to promote awareness of nutrition assistance among those who need benefits and meet all program requirements under current law.” Vilsack wrote to Sessions in a letter obtained by The Daily Caller. (RELATED: USDA uses Spanish soap operas to push food stamps among non-citizens, citizens)

Since the partnership began, Vilsack wrote, USDA personnel have met at least 151 times with officials from the Mexican government “to discuss nutrition assistance programs as well as to provide program updates.” Those instances included 91 meetings with embassy and consulate staff in 25 U.S. cities; 29 health fairs in 19 U.S. cities; and 31 roundtable discussions, conferences and forums in 20 U.S. cities.

Roughly 30 of these meetings and activities occurred under the Obama administration, Vilsack’s letter revealed.

The agriculture secretary added that the list might not be exhaustive as some of the meetings may not have been recorded.

Sessions has been the lead lawmaker pushing back against the partnership. According to the Alabama senator, the program appears to be in “plain conflict with the sound principles of federal immigration law.”

“The premise of American immigration is that those entering our country should have to work and to contribute to the financial health of the United States,” Sessions told TheDC Sunday evening. “Not only does the administration violate this principle through the partnership, but it does harm by gradually displacing the role of family and community with continual government aid. Welfare reform is guided by the moral principle that good policy helps more people live better lives.”

In his letter, Vilsack asserted that USDA does not pressure people to enroll in the program or is attempting to boost its rolls. President Obama, too, has said that “people do not come here looking for handouts.”

“We do not pressure any eligible person to accept benefits, nor is our goal to simply increase the number of program participants, but we are determined to help people in need make informed decisions about whether or not to seek assistance for which they may be eligible,” Vilsack claimed.

The mission USDA articulates on its website is to “increase participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program” — food stamps. The agency has been engaged in aggressive advertising campaigns and issuing guidance to state and local offices about how to enroll more beneficiaries.

Read more: Obama USDA met 30 times with Mexican gov't to promote food-stamp use among Mexican immigrants | The Daily Caller

Mexican Government officials should be concerned with taking care of their own and keep their nose out of our Country.

12:38 PM, Oct 1, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPER
The Weekly Standard

A new chart put together by the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee finds that, since 2001, the "number of non-citizens on food stamps quadrupled." Here's the chart detailing the growth in regards to non-citizens:



In 2001, according to data obtained by the United States Department of Agriculture, about 425,000 non-citizens were on the food stamp rolls. In 2003, that number increased to 519,000, in 2006 it was 795,000, and in 2009, when President Obama took office, it was 994,000.

Now, in 2012, it's estimated that 1,634,000 non-citizens are on food stamps. That means, since President Obama took office, the non-citizens on food stamps has nearly doubled.

" The 1996 welfare reform law significantly restricted food stamp eligibility for non-citizen immigrants. However, the 2002 farm bill reversed this policy, restoring eligibility and making the enrollment of non-citizen immigrants a high priority," the Senate Budget Committee explains. "Beginning in 2004, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of State, and the Mexican government began an ongoing partnership to increase enrollment in food stamps, and other USDA nutrition welfare programs, to eligible Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals living and working in the United States. Today, the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service website highlights that outreach is provided through 50 Mexican consulates in the U.S.

"USDA has an extensive “outreach” effort instructing employees and state food stamps administrators on how to maximize enrollment of both citizens and non-citizen immigrants, lamenting that more non-citizens immigrants are not currently enrolled."

And the Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee explain how the USDA has been boosting the food stamp rolls. "USDA produced and broadcast soap opera-like Spanish language ‘radio novelas’ about the benefits of enrolling in the food stamp program, even insulting characters who wish not to enroll. Indeed, the premise of the novelas is pressuring (successfully) someone to enroll who claims they have sufficient financial resources and not require government assistance."

Illegal immigrants are not legally eligible for food stamps.

Non-Citizens on Food Stamps Quadrupled Since 2001 | The Weekly Standard

you are 100 % right Kiara
No amensty Or dream act

I thought that there was a waiting period, before even legal immigrants could receive welfare.

The Obama administration met with Mexican officials and held other events to discuss enrollment in food stamps and similar programs roughly 30 times since President Obama took office, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack revealed in a recent letter to Congress.

They were among 151 documented meetings and events held since 2004, when the United States and Mexico first started partnering on food-stamp awareness. That partnership, though, has raised alarm with Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who is concerned the collaboration amounts to a vehicle for the USDA to pressure people onto the food-stamp rolls -- in this case, noncitizen immigrants from Mexico.

Vilsack released the information in response to Sessions’ request this summer for more details about the U.S.-Mexico Partnership for Nutrition Assistance initiative, which educates Mexican immigrants about food stamps and other assistance.

The initiative is one of several the agency has “to promote awareness of nutrition assistance among those who need benefits and meet all program requirements under current law,” Vilsack told Sessions in the 24-page letter, dated Sept. 12.

However, his letter indicates the number of legal, noncitizens participating in the program -- now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- has increased from 425,000 to 1.23 million between 2001 and 2010. And a Republican Budget Committee staffer told The Daily Caller, which first reported the Vilsack letter, the estimated number of legal, noncitizens in the food stamp program is now roughly 1.63 million — more than double the number who participated in 2008.

Session, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, raised concerns in July about the initiative being intended to increase food stamp enrollment among citizens and non-citizens immigrants, and about it perhaps ignoring the “sound principle” of U.S. immigration policy -- that people coming into the United States should not have to rely on U.S. government support.

This summer, the Agriculture Department removed from its website a series of Spanish-language radio ads that featured one character being pressured to go on food stamps. The agency said the public-service announcements were posted roughly four years ago and some of the content failed to meet the standards of “appropriate outreach.”

In his letter to Sessions, Vilsack said none of the meetings he described with Mexican officials "were intended to pressure any eligible person to accept benefits" or to increase the number of people enrolled. "Their purpose was to help eligible people in need make informed decisions about whether or not to seek assistance," he wrote.

There have been an estimated 151 activities or meetings between U.S. and Mexican officials related to the initiative since it began in 2004 under the administration on then-President George W. Bush.

Among them were roughly 91 meetings between U.S. and Mexico embassy and consulate staff; 29 health fair events; and 31 roundtable discussions, conferences and forums in 20 cities.

Twenty percent of the meetings and activities occurred since 2008, according to Vilsack’s letter.
Those eligible for the program include Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals and migrant communities in the United States.

Vilsack wrote that illegal immigrants are not eligible for food stamps, there is no attempt to bolster the program’s rolls and people are not pressured to enroll.

Meanwhile, overall participation in SNAP this summer reached a record high -- 46.7 million people.


Obama administration held dozens of meetings on food stamps with Mexican officials | Fox News

ADDED WEEKLY STANDARD ARTICLE TO ALIPAC HOMEPAGE News with amended title ..

http://www.alipac.us/content/non-cit...nce-2001-1000/

Originally Posted by vistalad

I thought that there was a waiting period, before even legal immigrants could receive welfare.

Most (there are exceptions) “qualified aliens” entering the country are banned from receiving “Federal means-tested public benefits” for a period of 5 years beginning on the date of the alien’s entry with a qualified alien status. As for illegal immigrants, all dependent children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens are U.S. citizens which means they are entitled to welfare. Heck, the majority of them are even born on our dollar because most illegal alien parents can't afford the hospital costs.

MW,

Our birthright citizenship interpretation of the 14th Amendment is so nutso, that sometimes I forget that it even exists

From the Center for Immigration Studies: The overwhelming majority of the world’s countries do not offer automatic citizenship to everyone born within their borders. Over the past few decades, many countries that once did so — including Australia, Ireland, India, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Malta, and the Dominican Republic — have repealed those policies. Other countries are considering changes.


By Hans A. von Spakovsky

The 14th Amendment doesn’t say that all persons born in the U.S. are citizens. It says that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens. That second, critical, conditional phrase is conveniently ignored or misinterpreted by advocates of “birthright” citizenship.



Critics erroneously believe that anyone present in the United States has “subjected” himself “to the jurisdiction” of the United States, which would extend citizenship to the children of tourists, diplomats, and illegal aliens alike.


But that is not what that qualifying phrase means. Its original meaning refers to the political allegiance of an individual and the jurisdiction that a foreign government has over that individual. The fact that a tourist or illegal alien is subject to our laws and our courts if they violate our laws does not place them within the "political jurisdiction” of the United States as that phrase was defined by the framers of the 14th Amendment.
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Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

Total Welfare Spending Now at $1 Trillion By NRO Staff October 18, 2012 4:00 A.M. Total annual spending on federal means-tested welfare programs has hit $1 trillion. The Congressional Research Service is out with a new memorandum on spending on these programs. Senator Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate budget committee who requested the memo, has crunched the numbers and come up with the astonishing figure of $1 trillion in annual total spending on these programs as of fiscal year 2011, nearly $750 billion in federal dollars and another roughly $250 billion in state funding. Senator Sessions explains: Ranking Member Sessions and the minority staff of the Senate Budget Committee requested from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) an overview of cumulative means-tested federal welfare spending in the United States in the most recent year for which data is available (fiscal year 2011). The results are staggering. CRS identified 83 overlapping federal welfare programs that together represented the single largest budget item in 2011—more than the nation spends on Social Security, Medicare, or national defense. The total amount spent on these 80-plus federal welfare programs amounts to roughly $1.03 trillion. Importantly, these figures solely refer to means-tested welfare benefits. They exclude entitlement programs to which people contribute (e.g., Social Security and Medicare). CRS estimates that exclusively federal spending on these federal programs equaled approximately $746 billion, and further emphasizes that there is a substantial amount of state spending—mostly required as a condition of states’ participation—on these same federal programs (primarily Medicaid and CHIP). Based on data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Oxford Handbook of State and Local Government Finance, Budget Committee staff calculated at least an additional $283 billion in state contributions to those same federal programs,1 for a total annual expenditure of $1.03 trillion. By comparison, in 2011, the annual budget expenditure for Social Security was $725 billion, Medicare was $480 billion, and non-war defense was $540 billion. The exclusively federal share of spending on these federal programs is up 32 percent since 2008, and now comprises 21 percent of federal outlays (this share too is more than Social Security, Medicare, or defense). As a historical comparison, spending on the 10 largest of the 83 programs (which account for the bulk of federal welfare spending) has doubled as a share of the federal budget over just the last 30 years. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the amount expended on these 10 programs has increased by 378 percent over that time. Many factors have contributed to the growth in federal welfare spending, causing it to rise during times of both high and low unemployment. Persistently weak GDP growth over the last several years is unquestionably a factor in the record amount of money now being spent. But understanding the growth in federal welfare expenditures must also be understood in the context of a federal policy that has explicitly encouraged growth in welfare enrollment—combined with a weakening of welfare standards and rules. Total Welfare Spending Now at $1 Trillion - By NRO Staff - The Corner - National Review Online