Thread: CO-Loophole costing millions in payments to legal immigrants

Loophole costing Colorado millions in payments to legal immigrants
By Tim Hoover

Posted: 10/10/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT


A loophole in state law allows elderly legal immigrants to receive the same pension poor, older Colorado residents get, regardless of whether the immigrants' families can provide for them.

Lawmakers this year resisted eliminating the loophole in the state's Old Age Pension program because doing so would have prevented the state from receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in federal stimulus funds for Medicaid programs.

But with the state set to be free of the federal stimulus requirements in 2011, there is talk of reviving legislation next year to tighten requirements for the pension program and cut off what could be thousands of elderly legal immigrants who have relatives that sponsored their immigration and agreed to care for them.

"It's just kind of odd the way it's in law right now," said Rep. Jack Pommer, D-Boulder, who co-sponsored a bill last year that would have closed the loophole.

The pension program made headlines last week after it was announced that a Lakewood man bilked the state out of $1 million by signing up elderly Vietnamese immigrants for the program and keeping most of the pension benefits for himself.

But state officials, lawmakers and a former Denver caseworker say the program has a bigger problem than occasional fraud. The way state law is written, thousands of legal immigrants whose families said they would take care of them are instead receiving help from Colorado taxpayers.

Under federal law, family members who sponsor relatives as immigrants must agree to be financially responsible for them until they become a citizen, have worked for 10 years or have become self-sufficient. The immigrants cannot receive federal benefits for at least five years or until they have received citizenship.

Pension program created in 1936

However, Colorado law, which allows legal immigrants to receive the Old Age Pension, also says that a relative's income can't be counted against the eligibility of someone applying for the pension. Taken together, this means that the income of a legal immigrant's family sponsor isn't counted in getting the state pension, state officials said.

Voters added the Old Age Pension program to the state constitution in 1936. Originally, recipients had to have lived in Colorado for 35 years before getting the pension, but courts struck down the requirement.

Today, the program provides nearly 24,000 low-income Colorado residents who are at least 60 with cash benefits of up to $699 per month, and in some cases, medical benefits. In a majority of cases, people who qualify for the pension also automatically qualify for Medicaid benefits.

The cash-assistance portion of the pension program alone costs the state just over $80 million, of which about $53 million goes to nearly 8,700 legal permanent residents, which includes family-sponsored immigrants and those sponsored by churches and nonprofits, refugees and people granted asylum.

Department of Human Services officials say elderly immigrants typically qualify for larger cash benefits because they have no demonstrable income.

The department last year pushed the legislation to tighten eligibility, and the bill essentially would have aligned state rules with federal law.

The bill would have saved an estimated $31 million per year when fully phased in by fiscal year 2012, human-services officials said, eliminating the benefit for an estimated 4,000 legal immigrants whose families sponsored their immigration.

Shifting burden to taxpayers

Michael Whalen, a former Spanish-speaking caseworker for the Denver Department of Human Services, said that while a number of legal immigrants are legitimately in need of the benefit, it's clear the sponsoring relatives of others are shifting their responsibility to taxpayers.

Whalen said that during his three years as a caseworker, it was not uncommon to see elderly immigrants who had arrived in the country only weeks earlier applying for the pension despite having sponsoring relatives who had agreed to care for them.

Whalen said he and other Denver caseworkers observed a high concentration of applicants all from the same region in the north-central Mexican state of Zacatecas.

"Clearly, the message has gotten out," he said. "People know that you can do this. And who can blame them? No one's minding the store."

Loophole not a big issue, group says

Chandra Russo, spokeswoman for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, said the loophole was not a "big issue" because it likely applies to so few legal immigrants.

"I guess I'm not so concerned about a small group of people who have played by the rules and who have waited to get in the country getting some help if they need some help," Russo said.

Pommer and Sen. Abel Tapia, D-Pueblo, sponsored the legislation to close the loophole. They quickly found out they would have to scuttle the bill.

Under state law, Old Age Pension eligibility is also a category of eligibility for Medicaid, the state and federally funded program that provides health care to the poor and disabled.

Colorado, like many states, was set to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in federal stimulus funds to help shore up its Medicaid program. But any reduction to existing Medicaid eligibility levels would have disqualified the state from receiving stimulus funds to help with its Medicaid costs.

"We needed to do it last year, but we ran into a conflict with federal law," Pommer said. "I think we should do it again. It's outrageous. We should have tougher regulations on this."

Tim Hoover: 303-954-1626 or thoover@denverpost.com


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Frankly, if they are here and abusing their privileges, they should be deported and their process revoked. If you say you are going to sponsor or be self sufficient and don't, that's grounds for terminating the contract and they should should repay every cent they took.

It's lying and stealing and thou shalt not do it.

Dixie