Thread: Illegals aren't eligible for most benefits

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For the record: Illegals aren't eligible for most benefits


August 18 2006

The debate over illegal immigration will proceed more rationally if accompanied by facts. Not fear, not fantasies, but facts.

Among the facts we must be straight on is this: For the most part, illegal immigrants do not get benefits, not in this state or in the nation.

For a decade there's been a law on the books barring illegal immigrants from almost all federally funded benefits, including welfare, food stamps and unemployment compensation. In 2005, Virginia added a law barring illegal aliens from state welfare and most state and local health services. Illegal immigrants can't get Medicaid, and new procedures are requiring that applicants prove they're eligible based on citizenship. That's a change from the earlier method, which was loose - it accepted applicants' declaration that they were eligible - but not necessarily problematic. Research hasn't documented a significant problem with illegal immigrants on Medicaid. Indeed, any savings realized by new rules requiring extensive documentation could be eaten up by the bureaucracies' cost to enforce them.

No matter what their citizenship or immigration status, people in this country are entitled to three things: K-12 education, emergency medical care and disaster relief. That makes sense.

The provision of public education benefits society, as well as immigrants: We are not well served by large numbers of uneducated, unskilled, alienated and idle people hanging around.

Providing emergency medical care protects our claim to humanity: How could we be the kind of country that would deny compassionate care to someone in a medical emergency? How could we ignore the fact that immunizing children protects them and everyone they come into contact with? And how, after a disaster, would it benefit a community to deny some of its residents the basic aid to help them recover? As it is, illegal immigrants are eligible only for in-kind and noncash help.

And of course everyone, regardless of citizenship, has the right to claim some basic services: to have police and firefighters respond when they call, to decently maintained streets, to have the plumbing in their homes connected to municipal sewer systems. And no one is denied admission to a prison because of immigration status.

But inflammatory rhetoric and political ads that imply that immigrants come here to get benefits, and indeed do get taxpayer-funded benefits, are not only misleading but downright false.

Indeed, researchers have found that because immigrants come here to work, and most do work, they actually make a positive contribution to Social Security and Medicare. The employees' and employers' shares for these programs are paid into the system, but illegal immigrants can't claim benefits. So the rest of us come out ahead - to the tune of $7 billion a year, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, which also figures that half of illegals work "on the books" and so contribute to these cash-hungry programs.

There is one way that immigrant families get benefits, and that is under the constitutional provision that children born within our borders are U.S. citizens and can claim the same benefits as other citizens, including Medicaid and welfare. But by being born here they aren't immigrants. Their treatment as citizens is based on court interpretations of the 14th Amendment and not likely to change.

Things can get a little sticky when it comes to specifics. In Virginia, some illegal immigrants get the advantage of taxpayers' contributions to higher education, since public colleges vary in their policies on policing citizenship of applicants. The General Assembly has been pulled two ways on the issue, and recently failed to pass both a bill to deny illegal immigrants admission to state colleges and one to grant in-state tuition rates to some who were brought here as children. But at the end of the day, we are not worse off for having in our midst educated young people, likely to become taxpayers.

None of this is to argue that illegal immigrants should get benefits. Or that they should necessarily be granted amnesty - which, if it made them eligible for benefits, could drive up the cost of taxpayer-funded services without collecting sufficient taxes to offset it.

It's just to get the record straight while we're having the conversation about illegal immigration.
Copyright © 2006, Daily Press

Sure they aren't elegible for most programs, that doesn't mean they aren't getting them, along with flat out Mexican Nationals, who cross the border daily to take part in all kinds of free programs. When I drive by the local welfare office in El Cajon, I see alll kinds of cars with Mexico license plates.

It's the same when I visit my doctor's office which shares a waiting room with a local Medi-Cal prenatal/baby delivery health care provider, cars in the parking lot with Mexico license plates, full of pregnant women with a dozen kids hanging off their ankles speaking not a word of English. But then I guess since these anchor babies are born here, and as he says are NOT immigrants, they then qualify for all kinds of public services.

When I go to the local grocery store, nearly every Spanish speaking person I see, with 4-14 kids in tow, none speaking a word of English of course, always seem to whip out EBT cards, Electronic Benefit Transfer, meaning welfare, to pay for their baby formula, diapers and tortillas. And funny thing, when you go out into the parking lot these same people are loading their several hundred dollars worth of groceries into gigantic, shiny, brand spanking new SUVs, with of course, Mexico license plates.

I guess they all think that it's the U.S. taxpayer's responsibility to pay for the pre natal, delivery, post natal care, food stamps, immunizations, pedicatric care, etc. for every single illegal or Mexican National who can get their butts across the border to sign up for FREE public services intended only for U.S. citizens.

Then of course there are the masses of Tijuana children who cross the border every day to attend San Diego schools at taxpayer expense, no doubt taking part in every free breakfast and lunch program, not to mention prgrams specifically created for Mexican teenage girls who already have babies at the age of 13-18, which is astronomical here in San Diego. And of course, since many of those babies are also born herre in the U.S. they are entitled to free public services, we pay for all their needs as well.

Gee it's so great to know that illegals and people from other countries never take advantage of our public services and are not a burden to the American taxpayer. It must be true, because these clowns say so, right?

The provision of public education benefits society, as well as immigrants: We are not well served by large numbers of uneducated, unskilled, alienated and idle people hanging around.

That's exactly why they need to be deported.

If illegal aliens could not send their children to public schools, how many would bring their children with them, or even come here in the first place.

As for taxpayer supplied benefits, the county where I work has a medical clinic just for illegal aliens. I know of several Amercian citizens who have tried to access the clinic and were basically told they weren't welcome there.

No matter what their citizenship or immigration status, people in this country are entitled to three things: K-12 education, emergency medical care and disaster relief. That makes sense.

NO they aren't. The illegals have NO rights to anything....they should NOT be physically in our country.

I'm so fed up with pro-illegal nonsense. Just the facts, publish, just the facts.

reptile09, your reply mirrored my experiences in So. Fl.

For a decade there's been a law on the books barring illegal immigrants from almost all federally funded benefits, including welfare, food stamps and unemployment compensation.

What, no mention of that huge loophole that allows illegals to break yet another of our laws in order to partake of these taxpayer funded benefits by the millions?

Social workers cannot ask those seeking said benefits to show proof of legal status, nor are the applicants required to provide it!

A glaring fact always conspicuously missing in these "illegals don't get benefits" propaganda peices?

Right you are, greyparrot!

That's why I said, just the facts.

Indeed, researchers have found that because immigrants come here to work, and most do work, they actually make a positive contribution to Social Security and Medicare. The employees' and employers' shares for these programs are paid into the system, but illegal immigrants can't claim benefits. So the rest of us come out ahead - to the tune of $7 billion a year, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, which also figures that half of illegals work "on the books" and so contribute to these cash-hungry programs.

First, I want to know how they came up with that $7 billion number when we're not even sure how many are in this country. Second, we have no idea how many are being paid "under the table" which is NOT contributing to social security and Medicare.

Greyparrot hit the nail.....we can't ask status, and some are using falsified documents, so who knows what/how much illegals are receiving?!

The provision of public education benefits society, as well as immigrants: We are not well served by large numbers of uneducated, unskilled, alienated and idle people hanging around.

Oh, you mean kind of like what we taking place now???
I, for one, don't buy this bovine scatology.

...the employees' and employers' shares for these programs are paid into the system, but illegal immigrants can't claim benefits.

So what? Why is this such a bad thing? Considering they've already entered the US illegally, are staying here illegally and working here illegally - and now are collecting a paycheck - why is it such an injustice?
When you 'play by the rules' you are rewarded with benefits and protections commensurate with citizenship (and legal residents), when you don't... you shouldn't be surprised to get less.