Arizona migrant households use welfare at high rate, report
Arizona migrant households use welfare at high rate, report says
31 commentsby Daniel González - Apr. 6, 2011 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
.
A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that wants to restrict immigration, says that immigrant households with children in Arizona use welfare programs at a higher rate than in any other state.
Sixty-two percent of immigrant households with children in Arizona use at least one welfare program, edging out Texas, California and New York, all with about 61 percent, said the report, based on census data for 2009.
In comparison, nearly 39 percent of native households with children in Arizona use at least one welfare program, said the report, which drew criticism from some immigrant-and children's-advocacy organizations for making what they said were unequal comparisons.
Nationwide, the report found that immigrant households with children use welfare programs much more often than native households with children, 57 percent compared with 39 percent.
The report also found that households headed by illegal immigrants used welfare programs more often than households headed by legal immigrants, 71 percent compared with 52 percent.
The report included welfare benefits received by U.S.-born children of immigrants in the immigrant-household category. Illegal immigrants are barred from receiving most welfare benefits for themselves. In general, legal immigrants must wait five years before they are eligible for welfare benefits. The report did not differentiate between legal and illegal immigrants at the state level.
The report attributed the disparity in the use of welfare programs to lower education levels among immigrants compared with native-born residents, not an unwillingness to work. The vast majority of immigrant households, 95 percent, have at least one person who works.
But because immigrants tend to have lower levels of education, they tend to work in lower-paying jobs and therefore are more likely to use welfare programs to help support their families, said Steven Camarota, the center's research director and author of the report. "These figures do not reflect some kind of moral defect on the part of the immigrants. Rather, what they reflect is the relative education levels," Camarota said.
Cracking down on illegal immigrants and adopting more selective immigration policies would help reduce welfare use among immigrants, the report concluded.
Some immigrant-advocacy groups criticized the report, saying it was engineered to inflame anti-immigrant sentiment by making an unequal comparison between immigrant households, which tend to be low-income, and all native households, including low-income and high-income households.
Immigrant households use welfare programs at about the same rate when compared with the low-income native households, said Jonathan Blazer, an attorney at the National Immigration Law Center an immigrant-advocacy group in Washington, D.C.
"This is an old CIS trick," Blazer said. "They do it to make it look like immigrant households are welfare users and dependents and especially likely to be on welfare programs because it serves their express agenda" of controlling immigration and limiting access to public benefits by immigrants.
The CIS report examined usage of eight federal "welfare" programs, including Supplemental Security Income and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, both cash-assistance programs, and Women, Infants, and Children, a food program. It also examined usage of the free and reduced-price school-lunch program; food stamps; Medicaid; and public housing and rent subsidies.
Food assistance and Medicaid programs had the highest usage among immigrant households, the report said.
Dana Naimark, president and CEO of the Children's Action Alliance of Arizona, criticized the report for including free and reduced-price school lunches with other food-assistance programs and for blurring the line between immigrants and benefits received by their U.S.-born citizen children.
"The report lumps a lot of things in with one label," she said. "Any report that portrays nutrition for babies and affordable school lunches and doctor (visits) for kids as negative is a report that should be suspect from the beginning."
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... z1IltlEnfi
Re: Arizona migrant households use welfare at high rate, rep
They aren't fooling any American with their weak claim of coming here for a better life! We all know they are here for a FREE life!!!!!!!!!!! They are only out for themselves and are NOTHING MORE than Freeloaders!
