Should Legal Immigrants Receive Public Benefits?

Transcript

MR. KENT WEAVER: I want to welcome all of you. My name is Kent Weaver. I'm one of the co-directors of the Brookings Welfare Reform & Beyond initiative. I want to welcome you to Brookings on behalf of the rest of the senior members of the Welfare Reform & Beyond team. Isabell Sawhill and Andrea Kane is sitting over there— Belle is off on vacation today. This is I think about the eighth in our series of public events through the Welfare Reform & Beyond initiative.

Incidentally I also want to note, as I went through the list of names of Belle and Andrea. You notice a name missing. Ron Haskins, I'm sure all of you know by now, has gone to the White House to help President Bush with his welfare reform initiative, and I think all of us want to congratulate Ron on his new position and we feel that welfare reform policymaking in this round will be well served by having Ron in this position. We're very proud of you. I don't see Ron here, I think he's probably lurking around somewhere.

As I said, this is about the eighth in our series of public events. The topic that we're focusing on today is whether and to what extent legal immigrants to the United States should receive public means tested benefits.

Clearly this is going to be a central issue in the debate on reauthorizing welfare reform this year as it has been for most of the past decade.

As most of you know, cuts in benefits for legally resident non-citizens was one of the most contentious issues in the rounds of welfare reform policymaking in 1995, 1996 that led up to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, affectionately known as PRWORA. And when President Clinton signed that legislation in August of 1996 he was critical of the immigrant provisions and said he would work to secure revision in the legislation particularly on the immigrant provisions.

Again, as many of you know Congress in 1997 did indeed make some significant changes to provisions regarding non-citizen benefits, but the issue didn't go away. It's still very contentious and still very politically salient.

In January of this year President Bush announced that he's going to seek a further loosening of restrictions relating to the receipt of food stamps for those who entered the United States after passage of the 1996 legislation. His proposal was welcomed by some, criticized by others as inadequate, and criticized by still others as being a betrayal of the objective of the 1996 legislation.

One of the purposes of the Welfare Reform & Beyond initiative is to seek a vigorous and yet informed and civil debate on issues relating to low income families and I don't think there's any more appropriate issue for such a debate than the one we're focusing on today. I hope that the debate will indeed be all of those things— vigorous, informed, and civil.

I also want to note that Brookings has a new policy brief on this topic. I think it's in the packets, for those of you who got the packets outside the door. For those of you who are watching in cyberspace because this event is being webcast live, you can download that new policy brief which is co-authored by Ron Haskins, our recently departed colleague and by Michael Fix, one of our panelists today. You can download it in PDF format from the Welfare Reform & Beyond web site which is www.brookings.edu/wrb.

The schedule this morning is a really full one and it will proceed as follows. We're going to begin with two experts making very brief background presentations on current policy on benefits for non-citizens and on the effects of that policy. Then we're going to have a panel of three policymakers, one representative of the Bush Administration and two members of Congress who will offer their perspectives on the issue. Followed by an opportunity for questions from the audience both here and in cyberspace. Then finally we're going to have a panel of representatives of three groups that have been very involved in the debate on benefits for non-citizens who will offer their perspectives.

We'll have opportunities after the second and third panels for questions from the audience— both those live and on webcast.

So without further ado let me introduce our first two speakers who will come up in sequence. You have their bios so I'm not going to give lengthy introductions, but our first speaker is Shawn Fremstad from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who is going to focus on basically what the current policy is; followed by Michael Fix from the Urban Institute who is going to focus on the effects of recent policy changes.

Shawn, why don't you begin?

MR. SHAWN FREMSTAD: Thank you, Kent. I'm happy to be here this morning. This is going to be a very general overview of the immigrant restrictions in the 1996 law which is a very complex provision, but I think we can convey the essence of it.

First of all, the eligibility restrictions for legal immigrants were part of a much broader title in the welfare law that made really comprehensive changes affecting immigrants so it's important to note that there's more to that law than what we're talking about here today.

But if you look at the changes to legal immigrants, I think they can really be boiled down into two fundamental changes, two real fundamental shifts.

First of all, and here I'm going to be talking about the major safety net and work support programs— Medicaid, SSI, TANF and food stamps.

First of all immigrant eligibility restrictions that had previously only applied to undocumented immigrants were basically extended to legally, lawfully residing immigrants.

Second of all, and I think just as notable but I think often less remarked upon, were that states were given new authority in this area of immigrant policy basically to adopt eligibility restrictions in programs that discriminated on the basis of status as a legal immigrant. And this included authority to do so in their state benefit programs but also for the first time very notably in federal/state partnership programs like TANF and Medicaid.

As Kent noted, there were two significant changes, and all of these things have been really subject and in constant flux, but there were two significant changes to the original 1996 law.

First of all in 1997 there were some SSI restorations limited to pre-enactment legal immigrants, those in the country before August 22, 1996. There was also in 1998, as part of an Ag Research bill, much more limited foodstamp restrictions for pre-enactment immigrants in 1998.

If you slip to the next slide, basically what this sets up if you combine the 1996 provisions with some of the changes in 1997 and 1998, what you have is a very sharp dividing line between those immigrants who were in the country before the welfare law was passed and those who entered after, and kind of in a very rough sense, in the crudest sense you can think about this as generally those who were in the country before the law was signed remain eligible for programs, with some exceptions that we'll talk about in a second, while those who entered after are generally ineligible.

Just to give you a sense of kind of the magnitude of the populations, right now about two-thirds of legal immigrants in the country entered before the law was passed and about one-third, at least according to Urban Institute estimates, entered after the law passed, although that one-third is growing as you can imagine each year as new immigrants enter.

So first of all to talk about the pre-enactment restrictions, the restrictions for pre-enactment immigrants in a little bit more detail.

In general legal immigrants, pre-enactment legal immigrants remain eligible for Medicaid, TANF and SSI. Here we've got a couple of exceptions. In SSI most notably, non-disabled elderly immigrants are ineligible unless they were already receiving benefits when the law was passed.

Second of all, and this gets back to that second sort of the point about state authority, states do have the authority to deny TANF and Medicaid eligibility to legal immigrants, these pre-enactment legal immigrants, although this is really a very little used option at this point. Only one state, Wyoming, actually, denies Medicaid benefits and there's no state right now that denies TANF benefits.

While the general rule is pre-enactment immigrants remain eligible, there is one very notable exception and that's in the foodstamp program which still retains much more restrictive eligibility limits and in general legal immigrants remain ineligible for that program except for a couple of exceptions— disabled persons are eligible as are certain people who are elderly and in the country before the law was signed and certain people who are children and who were in the country before the law was signed.

If we can go to the next slide, this is the post-enactment eligibility restrictions, for those legal immigrants who entered after the law was signed.

Here, as I said, the basic rule is immigrants who entered after the law was signed are ineligible for Medicaid, TANF, SSI, and food stamps until they become citizens or until they can be credited or have worked in the United States for 40 quarters, basically ten years.

A couple of exceptions here, refugees and asylees. These are roughly 10 percent of the legal immigrants who enter the United States every year. They remain eligible during their first seven years, or five years in the foodstamp program for benefits. And then states also have an option to provide TANF and Medicaid benefits after legal immigrants have been in the country for five years.

There is also one other important distinction, I guess. In the Medicaid program legal immigrants are eligible for emergency Medicaid services but not for other Medicaid services. This emergency exception, however, doesn't apply to the other programs. It doesn't apply to SSI, it doesn't apply to food stamps and it generally doesn't apply to the TANF program.

Let me just mention one final thing and this is somewhat arcane but I think it's actually an important thing that affects eligibility for these post-enactment legal immigrants and that's sponsor-deeming. Sponsor-deeming is basically the requirement that an immigrant, the income and resource of an immigrant's sponsor be counted in determining that immigrant's eligibility for benefits and also the amount of benefits that they're actually eligible to receive.

Sponsor-deeming had been in place prior to the 1996 law in the cash programs and in the food programs, but they had been limited to two years. The 1996 law basically expanded sponsor-deeming significantly, extending it to healthcare programs and also lifting the three year limit so sponsor-deeming is in place until citizenship or until 40 quarters of work.

One of the things this means is even in programs like Medicaid and TANF where there is eligibility on paper for immigrants after five years, sponsor-deeming as a practical matter will render many immigrants ineligible until they become citizens, so in some ways it actually ends up being much more of an eligibility bar.

With that I will close and turn it over to Michael to talk about what we've seen since then.

MR. MICHAEL FIX: Thanks, Shawn. And I want to thank Kent and Brookings for putting on this, to say the least, timely session.

My mission as we've heard is to simply summarize some of the results of some research that we've been doing at the Urban Institute on the impact of welfare reform on immigrants. The research has been done by Jeff Passel and by me, mostly by Passel. And many of the results are incorporated into the brief that you got in your packet this morning which I co-authored with Ron Haskins.

That brief sort of takes a step back and looks at the long view of what happened in welfare reform and it makes some quite brave and it looks like somewhat wobbly predictions about what's going to happen in the future.

Let me begin by setting welfare reform's reauthorization in context, and here I think it's useful to start with the simple demographic point that the population of immigrant families and children in the United States today is now so large that reform of any social welfare policy, whether it's TANF reauthorization or whether it's education reform, is going to have a disproportionate impact on immigrant children and families.

Today one in nine people in the United States is an immigrant. One in four low wage workers in the United States is foreign born. Importantly I think for our purposes today, one in five children in the United States is the child of an immigrant and one in four low income children in the United States is the child of an immigrant.

What did we find when we looked at the impact of welfare reform on immigrants? Using the 2000 and the 1995 current population surveys, Jeff Passel and I find steep declines across all means-tested federal benefit programs between 1994 and 1999 for legal permanent resident families. So that we see despite federal restoration of benefits in 1997 and despite some surprisingly generous policy responses at the state level, non-citizen use of benefits still fell sharply with drops ranging as you can see here from 60 percent for TANF, 48 percent for food stamps, to a lower 15 percent for Medicaid which in this case combined CHIP.

Can we get the next slide, please?

This story changes a little bit when we shift our focus from legal permanent resident immigrant families to a population that more closely approximates the welfare eligible population. That is to say immigrant families who have children and who have low incomes, incomes under 200 percent of poverty.

What happens when we look at this set of families is we still see sharp drops in TANF, we still see sharp drops in food stamps, but we see less of a decline when it comes to Medicaid and CHIP and this was of course a major mystery to us.

Our preliminary explanation for this is the fact that we did see the introduction of the Child Health Insurance Program in 1997, we do see broad outreach in both the Medicaid and the CHIP program being implemented over this period, and we do see some systemic change in insurance enrollment, most notably the fact that you don't have to go downtown between 9:00 and 5:00 to go to the welfare office to get health insurance these days as you had to always in the past.

Now this figure also carries some other very interesting information because it shows that in 1999 as in 1994 poor non-citizen families use rates for TANF and food stamps fell below citizens, and this suggests that when you control for income and when you control for the presence of children and families, immigrant families are less dependent on welfare than is the case for native families.

Now of course one of the lessons, at least for me, of welfare reform is that it's very difficult to target cuts at one population without having spillover effects on other populations. Here take for example the case of mixed status families. Mixed status families are families who one or more of the parents is non-citizen and one or more of the children is a citizen.

According to the census, 85 percent of children in families with a legal immigrant parent are themselves citizens, and in the wake of welfare reform what we see is that citizen children in these mixed status families are less likely to receive TANF and food stamps and are more likely to be uninsured than poor kids in citizen families.

We see the same kind of spillover effect among refugee populations. In fact one of the most mystifying results of our research is an absolutely stunningly sharp decline across all public benefit programs on the part of refugees, and as we just heard from Shawn, refugees are in effect a protected population under welfare reform because they're eligible for benefits for seven years after they enter.

Next slide, please.

Just as welfare reform has brought home to me the importance of mixed status families, it's also highlighted the importance of the state of an immigrant's residence.

Between 1995 and the year 2000 we found that the number of immigrant families with children grew four times faster in states with the least generous safety nets like Arkansas and Texas than it did in states with more generous safety nets for immigrants like California and Massachusetts.

It appears then that jobs and not welfare are driving their migration patterns and this to my mind calls into question the continuing logic of the welfare magnet theory which underlay welfare reform and is sustaining the immigrant restrictions within it.

As this figure indicates, during this period non-citizen use of TANF in these weak safety net states fell by almost 75 percent and it fell from an already low base to almost nothing. This raises for me an important policy "so what". That policy "so what" is that it seems to me that many immigrant families may now be finding themselves in states with skeletal safety nets in a tough post-September 11 economy with, I think, unclear implications for their immigration.

What accounts for these declines in public benefits use that we've documented here? There are two logical explanations. First, legal permanent residents became citizens; and second, their incomes rose and their eligibility benefits declined.

To make a long and technical story short, our analysis finds that neither begins to explain the steep declines that we've documented here.

Let me sum up and I think there are some summary points in your packet.

In 1999 at the threshold of the current economic downturn we found broad declines across all means-tested federal programs for legal permanent residents. We found that before and after welfare reform poor legal immigrant families with children used less food stamps and TANF than citizens. We see high levels of uninsurance rates among both non-citizens and citizen children of legal immigrants, a discussion which I wasn't able to get to within my allotted seven minutes. We see steep declines in benefit use for refugees, declines that we can't fully explain. We see especially steep declines among poor families living in states with fast-growing immigrant populations and poorest safety nets. And we see that naturalization and income gains do not explain most of these declines.

Finally, there is some emerging evidence about hardship, and let me close by citing Harvard economist George Borjas who found that food insecurity is rising among immigrant families expelled from the safety net by the laws of immigrant restriction.

Thank you.

MR. WEAVER: I want to thank Shawn and Michael for really masterful presentation of incredibly complicated information in an extremely short period of time.

Those of you who have some questions for Shawn and Michael you will have an opportunity to ask them questions at the end of the last panel. You can ask questions of them or the panelists on that panel.

But before we get to that panel we have a panel of very distinguished policymakers who are going to give us their perspectives on the issue. There is a fairly pronounced Southwest flavor to the panel.

Immediately on my right is Congressman Xavier Becerra who represents the City of Los Angeles in Congress where he serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, and of course the Ways and Means Committee will be absolutely critical to consideration of welfare reform legislation this year. He was a former member of the California state legislature before he came to Congress.

Down at the far end is Representative Tom Tancredo who represents Colorado in the House of Representatives.

CONGRESSMAN THOMAS TANCREDO: A portion of it.

MR. WEAVER: Right, a portion of it. Jefferson and Arapahoe Counties. He's a former member of the Colorado legislature and also a former head of a state-based think tank, the Independence Institute in Colorado. So we're always happy to see representatives, even former representatives of other think tanks here at Brookings.

In the middle is Eric Bost who is the Undersecretary in the Department of Agriculture focusing on food and nutrition issues, has a distinguished career as a state level administrator of human services programs most recently in Arizona and in Texas where he worked for President Bush when he was Governor.

The format is we're going to allow each of the three panelists to make very brief presentations and then we will open it up for questioning. We'll begin with Congressman Becerra.

CONGRESSMAN XAVIER BECERRA: Good morning. To everyone at the Brookings Institution and to Kent and to Andrea who will be moderating, to my fellow panelists, my colleague and friend Mr. Tancredo and Undersecretary Bost, thank you very much. And to the panelists whom I know will make presentations along with those who made previous remarks, I want to say thank you to you for your additions to this particular debate.

This is to me a debate that's gone on for quite some time. It's been injected with things that aren't necessarily related to public assistance and welfare. And certainly immigrant policy, while it affects a number of people is not necessarily the most salient point in the whole debate on public assistance and welfare.

But having said that, we are going to reauthorize the welfare reform legislation of 1996 this year. We have various points of view, obviously, and certainly we find that our states face a far different circumstance this year than we did back in 1996 in the midst of an economic boom when we saw everything increasing including state budgets and surpluses.

This is not, public assistance it not an immigration or immigrant policy matter directly. TANF, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program is about reducing poverty in America and moving people away from dependency. And our focus should be on how we can help provide states the resources and the assistance they need to achieve their goal which is mandated by the federal government to reduce dependency which is a factor of poverty.

TANF is certainly not a perfect vehicle, but it is our only product within the system to support families in hard times who need to go back to work and become self sufficient. States working towards that mandate, towards sufficiency for, for the most part, women with children which is what we're talking about, did not ignore the immigrant population fortunately after 1996. They saw that there were more than 30.5 million people in this country, many in their states, that were immigrants on their way to becoming citizens. Fifty states continued to offer TANF assistance to immigrants who entered this country before 1996. Forty-nine continued to provide Medicaid. Seventeen states provided state-funded food stamps. And 23 states after 1996 provided state-funded cash assistance to some or all legal immigrant families eligible for federal support.

What's the message? States understood that of those 30 million people who were foreign-born, now immigrants, legally in this country, most on their way to becoming citizens, they were hard working and they were not impervious to poverty.

Today's economic recession I think brings home that message and that reality very very clearly. The downturn in the economy has hit states. More than three-quarters of our states have implemented budget cuts or hold backs. More than half the states are tapping rainy day accounts, and 45 states report revenues that are falling well below projections.

States are now forced to cut back on what they had identified as their priorities and particularly with regard to low income support programs.

What does this mean to us as policymakers here in Washington, D.C.? Certainly Congress should help those states create systems that do provide flexibility to combat dependency and poverty. Certainly Congress should do everything possible to help those states that are willing to provide for all of their residents in these times of economic uncertainty.

But this debate, as I said before, isn't always handled solely on grounds that are strictly on the issue of public assistance and TANF. We go into other areas. So let me address some of those collateral issues as well.

Is welfare a magnet for immigrants to come into this country? That's been suggested, we've heard it before, that enabling states to offer services and support programs for immigrants in an effort to combat poverty ends up attracting immigrants into this country and into these states. The data suggests that that is false.

During the 1990s states with the largest growth in their immigrant populations were the least likely to provide state-funded immigrant benefits as compared to most other states where there was low immigrant growth in their state. Let me give you some quick examples.

Fourteen of the 19 new growth states, those states that saw the largest growth of immigrants in their communities, 14 of them offered not one single type of cash or food support benefits to legal immigrants. I'm talking about Arizona, Virginia, North Carolina, Nevada, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Iowa, Kentucky, Idaho, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi. Fourteen of the 19th highest growth states, no cash assistance, no food support benefits for legal immigrants yet they saw the greatest increase in immigrant populations in the 1990s.

We see the issue of public charge. Today public charge is the number one ground for exclusion of immigrants into this country. You've got to be able to prove that you will not become a public charge of this country in order to able to come in as a lawful, permanent resident.

Another argument, these folks are foreigners and don't deserve to be in this country and certainly don't deserve to receive our services and benefits. In fact two weeks ago we saw a debate, again on an issue unrelated to immigration, a debate on campaign finance reform where there was an amendment to try to deny legal immigrants the right to make contributions. If you're at all a student of the Constitution you know it applies to everyone, not just citizens.

There was a debate where proponents of those amendments to ban immigrants from making contributions called them—lawful permanent residents— enemies of the state. And so the question becomes are these foreigners, these so-called enemies of the state, people who should be entitled to our services and benefits? Well, you have to put a face on a lawful permanent resident. They're not just those foreigners. They are our classmates, they are our coworkers, they're the pastors, the teachers, our neighbors, they are my parents. They contribute to America. The National Academy of Sciences has said that to the tune of some $50 billion in surplus, they take much less, so they give much more than they receive. You can talk to the 20,000 lawful permanent residents who are currently serving in our armed forces. You can talk to the 43,000 naturalized citizens, former immigrants now citizens, who are serving in our armed forces. Or you can talk to one of the every five Medal of Honor winners in this country who was or is a legal permanent resident.

The realities of immigration are that people come here to work, to build a home, and to make themselves part of this country. Not to leave. They work very hard. They follow that work ethic that we preach. In fact the foreign-born population, you can talk about them in terms of their work ethic. In the hear 2000 those foreign-born immigrants represented 12.4 percent of the total civilian workforce in this country, while they represented 11.2 percent of the population. In the year 2000 those immigrants, the men 16 years and older had an 80 percent labor force participation rate which means they were out there seeking jobs all the time, compared to 74 percent of the native male-born population.

At the same time, poverty is more widespread among the immigrant population. I think Michael Fix demonstrated that very well. Close to 42 percent of immigrants work at jobs paying less than $7.50 an hour compared to 28 percent of all of America's workers. And certainly what you see is that they are closer to the edge. When the hard times hit they are the first to fall over the precipice. They work very hard but they're that one paycheck away from poverty.

We will probably leave today, go back to our offices, and not even notice that the folks that are cleaning our office, serving our lunch, are a lot of the folks that we're debating about today. They are here to work, they are here to stay. That means that in times that are tough we should be there to help them as well. If we don't do it for the sake of today then we should do it for the sake of tomorrow.

Think in terms of child nutrition. When you deny that lawful permanent resident who has all of a sudden as a result of 9/11 lost a job access to food stamps you're not just hurting that adult, you're hurting that child. I don't believe there's any need for me to go into the correlation between malnutrition, ability to learn, graduation, success rate in high school, and then the 80 percent of people who are incarcerated in our country who have no high school diploma.

It's very easy to go from today to tomorrow.

I believe that if you take a look at this debate on public assistance and TANF, welfare, and you isolate it to deal with what is properly before us as a policy debate, what do we do to encourage people to leave dependency and leave poverty? What do we do to help mostly women who have children to be able to escape that cycle of poverty? Then we will deal with it not in terms of an immigrant woman or a minority woman or a poor woman, but as American women who are trying to escape that cycle of poverty. And if we do that, we will quickly see that the best course is to follow what many of the states did even in the face of action by this Congress in 1996 to restrict access to legal immigrants. We will provide them with the support that they need because they have followed our work ethic, they have worked very hard, they are trying to make the American dream come true, and what we will find is we will be the beneficiaries long term of their success.

Welfare will succeed at the end because this is a country that prides itself on how we will move people forward, but we will not do it if we clutter the debate with things that are not properly before us in debating TANF and welfare reform.

I believe that the information and the evidence is out there us where we need to go, and I believe that at the end of the day this Congress will do the right thing.

"Hundreds of thousands of immigrants take the oath of citizenship every year. Each come not only to take, but to give. They come asking for a chance to work hard, support their families, and to rise in the world, and together they make our nation more, not less American. Immigration is not a problem to be solved, it is a sign of a confident and successful nation. And people who seek to make America their home should be met in that spirit by representatives of our government. New arrivals should be greeted not with suspicion and resentment, but with openness and courtesy."

Great words. I wish they would have been mine, but they weren't. They were the words of our President, President George W. Bush. He said those on a day when he was flanked by two individuals of great importance to this country— Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao and Secretary of the Housing and Urban Development Department, Mel Martinez— both formerly lawful permanent residents. Today, very proud citizens and Secretaries of this great nation.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)

MR. WEAVER: A brief reminder to those out in cyberspace. If you have questions for our panelists you send them to question@brookings.edu.

Next, Representative Tancredo.

REP. TANCREDO: Thank you very much.

My colleague I think accurately described this issue as one that we should not try to confuse with other things, and I then must admit I thought I was being confused by an issue of immigration in general. What are we talking about here? Immigration, the concept, the philosophy of immigration. How much of it, from where, who will these people be? Or is this a discussion of welfare?

I thought it was the latter. We can certainly get into a debate about immigration policy in this country. I for one believe it has to be seriously reformed. I believe that immigration numbers should come down. I believe that massive immigration from all over the world has significant and potentially negative effects on many aspects of our society, so we can certainly debate that. I'm perfectly willing to do so.

The issue of course today is to what extent the concept of welfare in combination with immigration should be provided.

For about a century the policy of this nation has been to encourage self-sufficiency by immigrants by not admitting those who are likely to become public charges, and by deporting those who had become public charges. So we are not talking here about trying to implement something new when we talk about not allowing immigrants to obtain welfare benefits. It has been the policy of this country for, as I say, a hundred years, until relatively recently.

There's probably three real points that I want to develop here and they're probably also in ascending order of importance in my own mind. First is there is a fiscal issue with which we must deal. We have been trying very hard in the United States to reduce the number of people on welfare rolls. There is on that side both a fiscal and a moral issue, of course. But just dealing with the fiscal issue, we are now facing a budget situation where the other night on the Floor of the House as I was sitting there waiting to do a special order, I heard about 10 or more members of the other party for at least one hour talk about the dire straits we are in fiscally, the fact that we are raiding the Social Security trust fund, that there is no longer going to be a surplus, and that these are very dangerous situations, and that the budgets that we are proposing are profligate. I can understand and relate to that. I am a conservative Republican. I am quite concerned about the fiscal issues that face the nation. And I wonder about whether or not adding 330,000 people to eligibility rolls for welfare with a cost estimate I think far too low of about $2 billion over ten years— whether that's fiscally prudent.

And I would say that that cost, by the way, is quite modestly stated. It's probably far too conservative because as you might guess, I have different statistics than the ones with which you've been presented today about the usage of welfare by the immigrant population.

Before 1996 the cost of welfare for immigrants had skyrocketed to $8 billion a year. Harvard economist George Borjas who was mentioned earlier, by the way, found that immigrant households were 50 percent more likely to use federal welfare programs such as SSI, AFDC, Medicaid, food stamps, and WIC than were native families.

It was found that increasing numbers of often wealthy Americans were sponsoring their parents to immigrate and then letting taxpayers support them on Social Security income. The number of non-citizens on SSI increased by more than 600 percent between 1982 and 1995.

The Census Bureau showed that whereas only four percent elderly native Americans received SSI, 23 percent of elderly non-citizens received SSI.

In a recent, I think it was a CIS study, the Center for Immigration Studies published a study in July titled "Immigration from Mexico, Assessing the Impact on the United States". The study should be up on their web site, by the way. Reports that 14.8 percent of households headed by natives use at least one major federal, state or local means-tested program— SSI, public housing, rent subsidies, food stamps, Medicaid, etc. 21.2 percent of households headed by immigrants and 30.9 percent of households headed by Mexican immigrants. I would think that households headed by immigrants would include those where immigrants have naturalized or the U.S.-born children are receiving benefits.

So again, there is a difference in opinion and a difference in statistics information. Is anybody surprised about the fact that we've got debating statistics and statisticians on this issue?

Nonetheless, I believe that there is a concern, a legitimate concern with regard to the fiscal impact of such a decision.

Then there is the mechanics of this. I'm sure we will hear from the Undersecretary about the responsibility of the Department of Agriculture in this arena, but it is not just the Department of Agriculture that would have a role to play considering the fact that under the present law in order to actually put into place that mechanism that we talked about or that was talked about earlier in deeming, that is to say making some sponsor actually fiscally responsible if the person they sponsored does go onto welfare. But of course there is absolutely no mechanism to make that happen. It's not there.

And I must tell you something. Considering the fact that we're going to have to task not just Agriculture, but INS with some responsibility in this, if we do this thing, if we add more people to the eligibility rolls, more immigrants to the eligibility roles, then I suggest it's another disaster in the making. Because the INS is a disaster in and of itself. I'm not sure if we can describe it as the most incompetent of all federal agencies because the task of actually trying to determine that level of incompetence is very difficult. But it's pretty bad, to say the least.

GAO study after GAO study after GAO study, the most recent came out just a couple of weeks ago, suggests that there's really nothing left for us to do but to try and abolish this organization and recreate something that might work. Giving it any responsibility, for instance, in trying to identify, helping to identify the sponsors and helping us go after them and enforce the deeming aspect of this thing is, well, it's beyond reason to think that they can actually do that.

Last, and perhaps from my point of view the most important or disconcerting aspect of this whole thing I suppose is the political nature of this proposal. It is not unusual, certainly, for immigration to be used for political purposes, immigration policy to be manipulated for political purposes. President Clinton was responsible for blatant politicization of the INS during the 1996 Citizenship USA program. To ensure the maximum impact of getting people into the United States and naturalized the INS concentrated on aliens in key states— California, Florida, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Texas. They held a combined 181 electoral votes. There was wholesale immigration fraud during that period. Sources inside the INS revealed that in preparation for the 200 elections INS agents in district offices were directed to relax the testing for English, complete every interview within 20 minutes, ensure that all applicants passed the civics test by continuing to ask questions until an applicant got a sufficient number right. Sometimes it was necessary to ask 20 or 25 questions before four or five were answered correctly.

It went on, you probably recall that as a result of this kind of thing some, I don't know, 60,000 sticks in my mind. That might not be correct, but many thousands of people were made citizens who in fact were felons. It was pretty embarrassing shortly after that all happened.

So it is not unique. My point is that using immigration as a political sort of ploy and pandering to people for votes, that's not new. It's been happening a lot. But it's not good. That's exactly what we're doing here.

We will never— The reality of the situation is this. Although it is presented as an important political strategy that the Republicans can employ in order to attract people to the party who aren't normally inclined to vote Republican and therefore we are going to have this kind of outreach program. Outreach is one thing. I believe with all my heart that we should have every single immigrant to the United States who becomes a citizen and is therefore eligible to vote, and everybody else, by the way voting Republican, I believe that the principles our party stands for are in fact better than the others, and I believe that we can make a case for that. To anybody. From wherever they come from, however long they've been here. That's the basis upon which we should make any sort of political bid. We will never outbid the Democrats by using welfare for votes, to buy votes. We'll never do it. They're always better at it. They'll always up the ante.

Just the other day, I think it was yesterday, La Raza came out and said this program isn't nearly enough. So guess what? Not only is it a bad policy to use immigration for political purposes, it won't work.

MR. WEAVER: Thanks very much. There seems to be some difference of opinion here.

(Laughter)

Eric Bost?

MR. ERIC BOST: Good morning. I'm very pleased to be here with all of you today.

I'd just like to make a couple of historical points that weren't made earlier, and then I'll get into the Administration's proposal.

First, foodstamp participation by citizen children living with non-citizen adults dropped from 80 percent to 46 percent with the enactment of welfare reform, even though those children remained eligible under welfare reform. And two, some states have even used their own money to provide foodstamp benefits to certain classes of legal immigrants serving over 100,000 persons each month. I think that stands for the basis for the Administration's proposal.

In addition to that, currently legal immigrant provisions are complex and very difficult to administer for the states. That's one of the principles that the Administration is attempting to address as we discuss the reauthorization of the foodstamp program. We're interested in ensuring a couple of things.

One, first and foremost, that the foodstamp program is simple for people to apply for, easier for states to administer. However, and this is very important, ensuring a high level of integrity in our programs. I am asking, the Administration is asking for all of those to be a part as we go forward with this discussion.

Let's get into the Administration's proposals. President Bush's fiscal year 2003 budget proposal proposes to retain the five year residence requirement but to restore eligibility to all legal immigrants who fulfill it. It's that simple. In doing so about 363,000 people would benefit if the proposal is enacted and would cost about $2.1 billion over ten years.

The Administration proposal has, we believe, three very important strengths. One, it's simple; two, it affords broad coverage; and three, it's consistent with overall federal policy on immigration and public benefits.

It also aligns itself more closely with TANF programs which makes restoration after five years a state option which is currently selected by 45 states.

But most importantly, and the President in his comments when he talked about welfare reform I believe two days ago, he spoke of the need of helping those persons that were not able to help themselves, and he believes that this proposal is the right thing to do.

In addition to that, we believe that this policy helps to ensure adequate nutrition—food stamps are a nutrition-based program— among children and other persons that are at risk while continuing to require new entrants to the country to support themselves and their families through work.

We're interested in seeking that balance. On the one hand, temporary assistance to needy families. That program encourages people to work. We're interested in ensuring that people move from welfare to work and on to self-sufficiency.

On the other side for those persons that need to eat, we're interested to ensure that we meet the nutritional needs of children and their families. We're seeking, I believe the Administration, we're seeking that balance.

I think it's also very helpful that I share with you I think several questions that I have been asked, the Administration has been asked about this proposal. So what I'll do is just go through a list of some questions and answers and I think it will go a long way toward I think explaining what some of our thinking was.

One, as I say, what are we proposing? One, to allow legal immigrants who have lived in the United States for five years to qualify for food stamps if they're eligible. Two, why are we proposing this? As I said, we believe that one, it's the right thing to do; and most importantly, making legal immigrants ineligible for food stamps doesn't end the struggle that low income immigrant families have to put enough food on the table. And we also believe that they are a vital part of our society. And they are people that are here legally in this country.

Another question, why is there a five year limit? As I said before, we want to continue to send the message to new arrivals and their sponsors that people who migrate or immigrate to this country, they need to look first to work and being able to support themselves first. After five years people are more an integral part of the community and the relationship with sponsors has changed, and we believe that the five year waiting period is consistent with the rules of most federal assistance programs such as Medicaid.

This is one that we've gotten several times and I really want to take some time to explain this. So we're doing away with the work requirement for immigrants? No. There is a very distinct difference between a work history requirement and a work requirement. We're not going to focus on covered quarters of Social Security coverage because we believe it's very difficult, and having run the program in Texas it was very difficult for my workers to figure this out. But the issue is that there is a work requirement that is a part of the foodstamp program that most able-bodied childless adults under the age of 50 are subject to a timelimit of three months of benefits in a three year period. So there is a work requirement that's still there, and we're looking at making some changes to it but there is still a work requirement that's a part of it.

The other question that's interesting too is doesn't this make the United States more of a welfare magnet? Well, we don't think so for a couple of reasons. One, there is a five year waiting period. And the other issue is the fact that in terms of looking at the amount of money that's available to folks that are legal immigrants, after five years the average grant would be approximately $82 per month per person. So for five years we would have a person, I don't think they would be interested in coming to the country and waiting for five years to get $82.

Another issue is, I talked about cost and I also talked about the number of people that are served. Last but not least for us, and I want to close on this point which is very very important to the Administration. Having had the opportunity of working for the President for five years, there is a real strong belief that for those persons that are able to work we are interested in ensuring that they get a job, that they get a job, that they're able to work to support their families.

On the other hand, for those persons and children who need to eat, we are interested in ensuring that we are able to meet their nutritional needs. For us it's being able to strike the balance. I think that's the issue that's most important for us, we're interested in striking what we believe is a very, very reasonable balance in terms of helping people help themselves long term so that they are able to be self-sufficient. Thank you.

(Applause)

MR. WEAVER: Thanks very much.

We have a brief amount of time for questions. We're running a little bit behind in our schedule. I want to remind people out in cyberspace, question@brookings.edu is where to send the e-mail if you have a question. For those of you who have questions in the audience, I'll ask you to raise your hand and when you're recognized wait for the microphone to reach you, and stand up to ask your question and identify yourself so that we can get your ID, because there will be a transcript available on our web site later on.

Q: Hi. Mark Sherman with CD Publications. I'm a reporter.

Mr. Bost, the Administration has proposed restricting categorical eligibility under its proposals which is a way that people can get food stamps without having to meet the vehicle asset test in the foodstamp program, and they've done that in conjunction with proposing to loosen the vehicle asset test. Neither one of those is in the Farm Bill right now. Are you going to push for those changes? If so, what vehicle will you use?

MR. BOST: As you know, the Farm Bill is in conference and we are at the table discussing all of those issues.

Q: Merrill Smith with the Lutheran Immigration and Rescue Service.

It has been observed that internationally immigration and migration especially of poor people have been from the countries more regulated to the direction of the freer and less regulated societies because they perceive their opportunities for economic advancement are better there, and of course they've generally been right.

My question is, is that what we're seeing internally within the United States? I'm struck by the examples raised by Dr. Fix and Congressman Becerra that we see increasing migration to the states that actually don't offer benefits, but because there are jobs there which as Mr. Fix pointed out, that kind of shows that the immigrants are really here looking for work and opportunity rather than a handout. But is that part of a constellation of pro-growth, economic growth policies in particular states that generates the true magnet that would perhaps be better? Just comment on that possible connection. Is there a connection to that? For any of the three of you.

REP. BECERRA: Merrill, I'd say that that's probably the driving force for most immigrants. You're not going to try to somehow circumvent the law and apply for welfare, certainly if you're not a man. It's more difficult. It's going to be tough to get food stamps. So what you do is you look for places where you think you can earn a buck. Right now some of the states that have seen the most growth are those states that have not seen as much immigration and therefore have not tried to address the needs of immigrants as directly as say by California and New York that have seen large populations of immigrants for quite some time.

So it doesn't surprise me that some of the Southeastern cities saw the greatest amount of growth because there were job opportunities. In many cases, jobs that didn't require advanced skills that a number of immigrants could take, and as a result, they've flourished.

Q: Anjetta McQueen with Congressional Quarterly.

My question is, Mr. Tancredo, how important was it for President Bush to come out with a detailed proposal and to only address food stamps in regards to legal immigrants rather than other benefits?

REP. TANCREDO: Well, when you say how important was it to him, I haven't the foggiest idea. He didn't talk to me about it, and I don't expect that he will be. So I was not part of any process of decisionmaking for the Administration.

Why it was narrowed to that, I really couldn't begin to tell you. I have no idea.

Can I just make a point to the other question from Merrill for just a second. In my remarks you may recall I did not ever make the point of this issue of welfare being a magnet. That was not one of the issues that I addressed because I don't really think that you can say that. You can't generalize that in the immigration picture. I don't believe you can.

I think it is absolutely accurate, most people come here not for the specific purpose of getting on welfare, but to work to better their lives. I think that's observably true. So I don't subscribe to that particular notion of it being a magnet.

My concern is what happens. We had a very, I think, important debate in the early '90s about the impact of welfare on an individual. What happens to somebody as a result of going on welfare? It's not just an issue of the economic well being, but there is a moral aspect to this thing. A soul-searching thing that I think all of us have to ask ourselves about what happens to people on welfare? And so my point is that it is not necessarily from my point of view this scary thing that we're going to attract them here with, it is what we do to them, and everybody with welfare. That's why my point is to try and reduce the number of people on welfare, not make more people eligible for it. I don't think it's really a good thing in the long run for anyone?not immigrants, not native American citizens.

MR. WEAVER: Let me follow up with a more philosophical question that I'll begin with you and other people can address it if they want to. Where should we draw the line on what criteria on eligibility for means-tested benefits? Is citizenship the place to draw the line? Is it years of residency that should be used as the primary criteria for drawing the line in terms of eligibility? Is it years of work history?

In some countries, for example, eligibility for means-tested benefits for the elderly they base it on how many years you were in the country as an adult. If you came at 25 and you end up poor when you're aged, then you're eligible for full benefits. If you come at 45 then you're eligible for half benefits. What makes sense? Citizenship? Years of residency? Years of work history? Something else?

REP. TANCREDO: From my point of view citizenship certainly represents that standard.

I happen to believe that being a citizen of the United States takes more than simply stepping over a line from one country into another. There are major responsibilities that I think go along with it.

We are systemically I think, and systematically I guess I should say, we are destroying that line and that difference, and I don't think that's good. So I believe that citizenship would be a good standard, so therefore anything?What we're fighting here is a retrenchment battle, if you will, saying the standard was here and now it's being lowered to here and now it's being lowered to there, and arguing with that. But I want to move it up closer to that citizenship standard.

MR. BOST: But when you look at food stamps the Administration's proposal is for five years. When you look at temporary assistance for needy families, it's something else. Like I said, I think in many instances over the course of the last 20 years that I've been responsible for managing both programs, that people feel that food stamps is welfare. Well food stamps is a nutrition-based program. There are some that feel otherwise, but it's there to feed folks that are hungry. That was the basis for the program.

REP. TANCREDO: I think food stamps, by the way, is welfare not just for the recipient, but it's welfare for the farmers. That's one of the reasons why the Agricultural Department and the farm unions, farm blocks support it because they know that of course it indirectly supports farm income.

REP. BECERRA: Kent, I'd say that your question is viewing public assistance and in this case TANF from the wrong lens. It implies that people are trying to get on welfare for reasons other than what the principle purpose of TANF is. TANF is a transition vehicle to get, for the most part, if we're talking TANF, women with children out of dependency and back to work or in a position where they are self-sustaining.

If you start saying that if you're a citizen or if you're a legal resident, have been here five years, that has nothing to do with the circumstance of the woman who may be a lawful permanent resident earning $60,000 a year who all of a sudden as a result of 9/11 is no longer working for that firm that was employing her, and all of sudden is in a circumstance where she's trying to make ends meet.

To me if you start putting those types of labels and those demarcations, you're not really looking at what TANF is all about, or what food stamps are all about. That's what I said at the beginning, if you take a look at public assistance, TANF, food stamps, what they're meant to be?tools to rid us of poverty and to remove the cycle of dependency, then to put these other labels that have little to do with the cycle of poverty on individuals, especially women, don't get you further along in the process, and for that reason I think it would be important to try to put parameters and limits on people based on that citizenship or five years. You can do that and we do it, and principally we do it to immigrants through the fact of entrance, requiring them to be individuals who will not become public charges. So by their mere entrance into this country and being lawful permanent residents, they are saying that they will not become dependent on public services. And if they are, we do have the right, I think Congressman Tancredo is correct, we don't have a way to implement it well but we do have a law that says that if you do become a public charge you are subject to deportation.

MR. WEAVER: I think we have time for one more question.

Q: Jorge Velazquez of Child Welfare League of America.

We have over 1200 member agencies around the country, and while we're having this political debate our member agencies, our foster care associations around the country are beginning to see the tip. For example, Tennessee is beginning to struggle with immigrant families and refugee families that are falling through the cracks. Our concern, the concerns of our members is for those kids that are finding themselves in systems that can't deal with them. They don't understand the language, they don't understand the culture. I'd like for all of you to comment on that please.

REP. BECERRA: I think what you're saying reflects what I said earlier. That is that there is a longer vision that we have when it comes to trying to help people get out of that cycle of dependency, and that is that we see that these kids who are right now children of parents in poverty, children of parents on welfare will not have a chance to succeed unless we do something to give them that opportunity. That means that you've got to provide nutrition to help those families that all of a sudden find themselves perhaps temporarily in a state of need. And if we don't look at it that way and if we put these artificial constraints on people what we're going to do is face the consequences of not looking at people as what they are— individuals at a time of need.

Five years ago, ten years ago, we wouldn't be having this discussion about where Tennessee or California are because each and every one of those states had budget surpluses and were doing much more than they can today. We're at a point today when they can no longer on their own support those people in their states that were providing great benefit to them in the '90s, the federal government should come forward and at least, if nothing else— I think more, but least if nothing else provide the states with the means to have that flexibility to do what they were doing, the right thing. And by God I believe, as a member of Congress, that we should do more than give them flexibility. We should give them some support because it's our immigration policies, federal policies, that have given these states these social policies that they have to work with now.

MR. WEAVER: I want to thank three very busy policymakers for coming and spending more than an hour of their time with us. I think we asked for a vigorous, informed and civil debate and that's what we got, and we appreciate it. We hope we'll see you here again at Brookings soon. Thanks very much.

(Applause)

MR. WEAVER: We'll now make a quick transition to our third panel.

(Pause)

MS. ANDREA KANE: We now have another panel of three distinguished people, all of whom have very distinct and different views on policies with respect to providing benefits to legal immigrants. I'm going to very briefly introduce them because you have extended bios in your packages. But we're just going to go in alphabetical order, and they very conveniently sat in alphabetical order.

To my immediate right, Cecilia Munoz who is the Vice President for the Office of Research, Advocacy and Legislation at the National Council of La Raza where among other things she focuses on immigration issues.

To her right is Dan Stein who is the Executive Director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

To his right is Sheri Steisel who is the Federal Affairs Counsel and the Senior Director, Human Services Committee for the National Conference of State Legislatures where among other things she focuses on immigration.

So we're going to ask each of them to take five minutes to make a brief statement. They may want to react to what they've heard before. Then after that we will open it up to those of you in the room and those of you watching by webcast, and we'll follow the same rules that you just heard from Kent in terms of getting up and identifying yourself if you're in the room.

I will also say that Carly who is sitting in the front row has a time sign that she will give you a one minute warning.

Cecilia?

MS. CECILIA MUNOZ: Thank you. So many things to respond to and so little time.

We've heard it described a couple of times today and I think for anybody who has their eyes open and looks around them it's very clear that what drives immigration to this country is work and opportunity. People come to reunite with family members, that's the primary driving mechanism of the process, but immigration has always been and continues to be about opportunity and work which is why this debate has been so incredibly frustrating for all of the time that we've been engaged in it.

There are a lot of mythologies that have driven the debate over access to services for legal immigrants. You've heard some of them today.

There were two primary false assumptions which drove this debate in the mid '90s which led to the restrictions that were placed on welfare reform. The first was this notion that legal immigrants had unfettered access to the safety net and were using it at rates which were higher than they ought to and were becoming dependent on the programs. The second was that this is a politically vulnerable population, which is why essentially 40 percent of the cost savings in the Welfare Reform Bill was really a straight-up budget cut in services to immigrants. It wasn't about dependency ultimately, it was really about funds and about the fact that this is a population which is perceived to be politically vulnerable. If you're not a U.S. citizen you don't get votes. That was part of the calculation here.

But the bottom line is that these are myths. I think that's underscored by the fact that the proposal we saw introduced this weeks continues to foster this notion that immigrants are dependent on a program that five years ago we got cut off of. This notion that dependency is an issue in an environment where we have essentially eliminated eligibility for the major safety net programs I think really demonstrates how powerful these myths are in the face of what really goes on.

The bottom line here is that welfare reform itself was also about work. It was about getting people successfully into the workforce. And we can have a big debate about whether we've been successful in doing that, but that was really the driving principle behind this debate. And when you contrast that to what happened to immigrants you really see some difference.

Most of the programs which were made unavailable at the federal level to immigrants are programs which serve as support to families which are in the workforce. food stamps and Medicaid is a primary example. So the hit that immigrants took here is really about social support to people who are working. And as Congressman Becerra pointed out and as others have pointed out, these are folks who are here to work, who are attached to the workforce, but who do sometimes have other needs that we are essentially denying at the federal level by denying access to programs like food stamps and Medicaid. And really denying those programs, access to those programs to these individual does nothing to serve the goals of welfare reform in the first place which is about getting low income people who were not in the workforce successfully into the workforce. There's no relationship between that goal and these cuts in eligibility.

Legal immigrants as you heard Congressman Becerra describe come to this country with a series of stringent checks. Those checks got more stringent as a result of the welfare reforms in 1996 and the immigration reform which was enacted the same year. You can only come if someone petitions for you, a family member or an employer. That petitioner is such that the family member must sponsor an immigrant, the immigrant must demonstrate that they are not likely to become a public charge. Then there are strict deeming procedures in place in order to make sure that the sponsor is totally responsible for the people that they bring in, these family members that they bring into the United States.

So before immigrants come and once they are here there are a number of important checks to make sure that we're not creating a situation where people are coming to access services or are accessing them when they are not in fact in need. And as I know Sheri was just looking at me to point out, not all immigrants have sponsors, particularly those who were brought in by employers. And when there's an economic downturn you end up creating situations of need, and if you deny access at the federal level what you're really doing is creating some burdens on the states who may not be prepared to have major populations in their communities suffer hunger and other needs.

So legal immigrants go through stringent checks, they have the same obligations as the rest of us. They pay taxes. As you've already heard, they have the same obligations to register for selective service and serve in the military. These are folks who have the same responsibilities and the same commitment to this country that anybody else as a U.S. citizen does, and at some level this debate has become about equity. If we're talking about people with the same responsibilities who contribute enormously to this country, but they're also not superhuman, they are not immune to economic downturns, they're not immune to health crises and other kinds of crises, and therefore sometimes have needs. That's really what the thrust of this debate is about.

It's about treating people equitably in a nation of immigrants. Folks who we have admitted on equal terms as full partners in society with a full set of responsibilities in the society. What we're saying is if you're expecting folks to pay taxes and contribute as we should, then we should give them the same access to the safety net that we provide because they are no more or less vulnerable to crises than any of the rest of us.

MR. DAN STEIN: I will try to be very brief.

If you took a look at a snapshot of the immigrant population in 1965, 40 years ago, you'd find that the skills composition and educational attainment of the flow very closely mirrored the native-born population and that the overall numerical level of course was far, far lower, around 240,000 a year than it is today.

Clearly we have a very dynamic and changing situation and Garrett Harden, a famous biologist, once observed something called the PPCC gain. The privatizing of profits and the commonizing of costs. We feel that the public is entitled to know or needs to know a little bit more about the way in which the immigration policy and the welfare policies interact.

As employers and other folks who want to use low skill, low wage labor bring in people, what they're trying to do is pass off the cost of that low wage labor for these various programs we're talking about here, onto taxpayers and communities. At a time of rapid economic growth like what we saw in the mid 1990's, late 1990's, the public is willing to accept that proposition. But the politics of the issue are such that even during an economic downturn the political pressure to increase access to these programs continues, and hence we're here today talking about this.

There is a strong relationship between the nature of the immigrant flow, the poverty rate among the immigrants and the political pressure to deliver services.

When the Republican Congress addressed this issue in 1996, what we were hoping they would do is this. FAIR's primary interest is not in limiting access to welfare among immigrants. We do prefer that for most means-tested assistance that a person would become a citizen before any access to eligibility, certainly for anything non-emergency or foreseeable.

We would have liked to have seen a dramatic reduction in the overall size of the flow, coupled with a dramatic increase in the skills composition of the flow to take us back to something more reminiscent of what we saw in the mid '60s. That would obviate a lot of the issues that we're talking about here today.

I talk to people all around the country and one of the things they say is you know, when my grandparents came here we had sponsors and those sponsors were required to take care of us and none of this stuff that's going on today was allowed. It reflects back to a strong sense of American equity and fundamental fairness that if you're going to bring immigrants in, particularly those who don't have the capacity to deliver a value-added to put them over the poverty threshold, that somebody's going to have to take care of them and it shouldn't be me, the taxpayer. I think people still feel that today when you see school construction being cut back and what have you. They say well, the idea of immigration's fine, but hey, I don't want my taxes going to fund the cost of some employer's addiction to low cost, cheap labor.

So people wanted to see in '96, we still do, an enforceable public charge bar, not an academic one that has no functional meaning.

There's never been a period in American history where we've had a vast influx of unskilled and low skilled labor and a federal entitlement structure, social safety net, where we were trying to federalize the cost of the importation of this labor. That's really what we're talking about today, actually an affirmative move to introduce taxpayer-funded services to pay for the cost of low wage labor.

We want an enforceable sponsorship pledge, expanded deeming requirements for those who do have sponsors. We'd like to see an increase in the threshold requirement for the sponsor. What is the point of providing an affidavit of support if me, I, the sponsor, lacks the income required to actually make good on that pledge? They're not going to give me a car loan if I don't have any income, so why do you want to just let people sign sponsorship pledges if they're barely able to support their own families? And we would have liked to have seen an increase in, as I say, we wanted to see a dramatic increase in the skills composition of the flow.

The public, the American people, the state has a strong interest in seeing immigrants being encouraged to naturalize. Many people don't realize this, but we had a big amnesty in 1986, rewarded them with green cards and citizenship. Many of them did not become citizens, however, until after the 1996 law passed. The 1996 law turned out to be one of the greatest incentives to naturalize the immigrant community had ever received and there was a massive influx of new immigrants becoming citizens after that law passed.

So the other thing we'd like to see is improved federal/state cooperation. In 1996 Congress not only didn't enact the immigrant law reforms we wanted to see, but the federal/state cooperation agreements that should be in place to verify a person's eligibility to be in this country have not been forthcoming and it's still balled up in this whole question of drivers license standards and eligibility and machine-readable verification and on-line access from the INS and all these other issues we're dealing with in the post 9/11 environment, but that hasn't worked as well either.

Lastly I'll say this. It's a shiboleth to continue to say well it's not a magnet if you provide this program or that program. Clearly that's just a red herring. The point is people come here because of a basket of notions and ideas about what they're going to find when they get here, the overall quality of life, the opportunities, the nature of the American political system, freedom, or what have you. To pick out any one program in isolation or to say that because they're being attracted to a community which doesn't have any kind of social safety net, many immigrants are coming to those communities precisely because they're attractive economically to those employers who want to discriminate against American labor which is now rampantly happening in service industries and manufacturing across America.

So it isn't a magnet, you're right. Many immigrants come here, they don't want a handout. But if they don't want a handout, why give it to them?

MS. SHERI STEISEL: First of all, thank you for inviting me. I represent the interests of the 50 state legislatures and territories across the country, and for NCSL to have a policy position it takes three-quarters of the states to agree on a position.

Legal immigrant benefits is a federalism issue. It's a federalism issue pure and simple. What do I mean by this? The federal government sets immigration policy and they are responsible for the impacts of the immigration policy that they set. In 1996 Congress abdicated that responsibility by shifting the cost of legal immigrant benefits from the federal government to the state governments. Legal immigrants live in our community, they work for employers, they are our neighbors, they worship in the same churches, synagogues and mosques as everybody else.

So what happened was merely the federal government certainly took the income tax revenue from legal immigrants, but they certainly didn't share that revenue with the states.

Now every national organization that represents the interests of elected officials across the country?governors, mayors, county officials, state legislators, the appointed human service commissioners, all very strongly believe that the federal government has a responsibility to fund the consequences of their immigration decisions.

In 1996 we supported the welfare reform law. We very strongly believed in the whole process of welfare reform. But in our view this was completely contrary to the whole notion of devolution. The whole notion that we would have a state and federal partnership and that we would work together to move families into work and ultimately to self-sufficiency. These immigrant restrictions in 1996 did the opposite.

Look in food stamps, and you've heard this already but I'd like to sort of expand on it a little bit more, 17 states decided to use their own money to provide similar foodstamp benefits. In the time of a good economy most states increased their allocation to food banks and food pantries which are run by faith-based organizations and non-profits because they reported to state legislatures that the impact was growing on them. That in fact legal immigrants, employed legal immigrants were going to food pantries because they needed something to make up the difference, and the federal government shifted those responsibilities and the costs to the states.

In TANF and Medicaid, the interesting thing, and you heard it before from Shawn, is that only one state decided to make any kind of immigrant restrictions as it related to pre-enactment, pre-1996 immigrants as it relates to Medicaid and TANF. The policies are different at the state level, and I'm going to talk about that in a minute.

Fourteen states chose to use their own dollars to provide Medicaid support. Twenty-three states decided to use their own dollars for TANF-type services to legal immigrant populations. So what we have really is a cost shift to the states.

We strongly support the Administration's proposal and the President on foodstamp reform and also on, particularly on this issue of foodstamp benefits to legal immigrants and eliminating the ban. Our view is this would rectify the cost shift to the states. We hope that the conferees will adopt in the Farm Bill this restoration without any kind of administrative complexity. That we will look at the President's proposal as our guide.

We're saddened too, I have to say, by the absence of a TANF approach and by the absence of the President's proposal trying to make some changes as it relates to legal immigrants and TANF. We would have hoped that we would have turned immigrant eligibility like every other eligibility decision as an option for the states inside of a block grant. Because frankly, eligibility decisions in the welfare program are left up to the states, so that truly is a problem and we hope we'll get that fixed in reauthorization.

Let me quickly turn to a little bit of politics.

One other thing on TANF very quickly. The other problem, of course, is that all the services we fund with TANF to improve self sufficiency cannot be accessed by legal immigrants. So ESL for example, English as a second language, on the job training, we can't use TANF dollars for those important services, and states have found if they put money on the table that in fact legal immigrants perhaps some of these services, their lives would be improved. Unfortunately, they don't have access to those benefits.

The cost shift is pretty big in food stamps, you know. Minnesota, $1 million; California, $51 million; Massachusetts, more than $16 million. The costs are quite noticeable for the states, especially those states that tried to make up the difference.

The other thing I'd point out is the 2000 census and that's what so different in immigrant politics, and something state legislators had a much better sense of because of course we were working on redistricting which happens every ten years. Basically what we found is immigrants, legal immigrants live across our country. This is not a five state issue anymore. In 1996 everybody focused on five states?California, Illinois, New York, Texas, Florida. Now legal immigrants who have moved for employment are all over this country. So consequently when we look at even in foodstamp benefits, people have been surprised to see which states have decided to provide assistance. States like Missouri, states like Nebraska, states like Wisconsin.

One of the things that we've found now is that of course legal immigrants are becoming citizens. In fact just a couple of weeks ago the first Hmong legislator was elected in the state of Minnesota. So not only are former legal immigrants now citizens participating in our electoral process, they're also in fact becoming state legislators.

Let me close by saying this. In light of the fact that this is becoming a 50 state issue I'd like to share with you a story of a Kansas state legislator who called me up after the 1996 law and he said you know, I didn't think this affected me. He's a part-time farmer, part-time legislator. Most legislators in this country are part time. He said I didn't think the immigration law in 1996 had an impact on Kansas until I found out that most of the workers in our meat packing industry are legal immigrants. Most of these workers were denied foodstamp benefits and suddenly an important support for low income working families was gone from these folks in the meat packing industry. And this Kansas legislator now has gone to his members of Congress to say wait a minute, you've shifted those costs to us. We've increased our payments to the food banks and food pantries who are trying to make up the difference. But in fact this really is a cost shift. It's real, it's in dollars, and it certainly also impacts people.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)

MS. KANE: Great. We can open this up for some questions from all of you, and those of you watching by webcast. If you would raise your hand Marcia will bring you a mike. Stand up, identify yourself, and try to keep your question brief.

Q: I'm Stacey Dean from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

I wanted to follow up on a comment that Sheri made about TANF's purpose in terms of providing services to families.

The previous panel really focused on TANF as a cash support program which is certainly an important role in the safety net program, but over half the money spent in the TANF system is on services now. Things like job training, services that can provide wage progression, marriage counseling, pregnancy prevention, a wide range of services for lower income families.

I was wondering if each of you could comment on your thoughts about excluding legal immigrants from these kinds of services.

MS. MUNOZ: It's a very good point and it's one of the reasons why the immigrant cuts are so out of alignment with the goals of the welfare reform in the first place. If what we're talking about is getting people into the workforce and more successfully in the workforce it makes no sense to exclude immigrants from the kinds of supports that the TANF program is supposed to be offering.

And we're finding that among the folks who are least well served by the system, are folks with limited English proficiency. And by excluding immigrants from access to the kinds of services which can help them make the adjustment into English and become more successful in the workforce we're really undermining the goals of the program in the first place.

MR. STEIN: I don't know if the issue is ever going to be ultimately resolved. As long as we have an immigration policy that is admitting people who are going to have the kind of basic core needs you're talking about in these programs, there's going to be pressure to make them eligible again, even before they become citizens.

I just think we have to have a policy debate about these programs within the framework of how did we get where we are today in terms of importing a poverty class as part of an overall immigration program and who ought to pay for that? If the federal government should pay for that, then the taxpayers of this country need to be entitled to a full understanding of what the costs of today's immigration program is.

As I look back at the debate over the last 20 years as I've been involved in it, if we had followed the recommendations of the Hessburg Commission in 1979 and Barbara Jordan's commission in 1995 and made the reforms to immigration policy that have been recommended over and over again, there would be no need to have had the welfare reform, the immigration provisions that took place in '96.

MS. STEISEL: The Constitution obviously sets out that immigration is a federal responsibility, and so consequently we have felt very strongly about this issue of benefits, but I want to talk about services because Stacey's exactly right. I mentioned it very briefly in my remarks.

Most states have in fact transformed their TANF programs into programs that provide important services for employment, for prevention, especially prevention of out of wedlock pregnancies, and to promote the formation and maintenance of two-parent families. So as we've moved to services using TANF, the sad part has been that legal immigrants who could use these services, who are becoming citizens, are in fact denied those services. And it's been especially I think bad for the faith-based and non-profits that we work with who have had to turn away legal immigrants from these important services.

Q: I'm Cheryl Wetzstein with the Washington Times.

The President's proposal for TANF for welfare reform creates a super waiver opportunity for the states to go ahead and go into the Department of Agriculture programs and Department of Education, the Department of Labor and ask for changes in those programs.

I'm wondering will states be able to use a super waiver to get permission to use TANF money for English as a second language or job training or something that could be targeted to the immigrant population.

Secondly, would they also be able to maybe then bend those rules and create work requirements for immigrant populations where the states feel like they want to impose a work requirement that the federal government has not?

MS. STEISEL: I would start by saying that first of all we are thrilled to see the Administration's proposals for starting to look at waivers, especially waivers across different agencies. One of the things that states really said in the listening sessions that HHS held across the country was the need for waivers across these various programs so we can work together towards implementation. And right now we've looked in such a bifurcated way at how we implement these programs.

We would like to see the restoration of foodstamp benefits and our ability to use TANF benefits on these programs. I am sure that states will try to use this waiver process if we are not successful as a means of going forward, and we certainly welcome the Administration's proposal. At the same time we think the best way to handle this is to make the changes necessary in federal law to remove the cost shift to the states.

MS. KANE: Eric, do you want to respond to that?

MR. BOST: One thing about the President's waiver, it would probably be cost neutral, so I don't think it would have a cost shift.

MS. STEISEL: You'd have to look at the overall, but yes.

MS. KANE: Let me take a question from one of our web viewers out in California. I'll just read what they asked.

Why is welfare for legal immigrants even an issue? Why aren't the sponsors being held accountable or the immigrants being deported if they become dependent on taxpayers?

MS. MUNOZ: In Dan's comments he talked about making the sponsorship enforceable. That happened in 1996. Increasing the threshold for entry so that people have a higher threshold to pass before they can come to the United States. We did that in 1996 as well.

The reason that this is even an issue is because we're a nation of immigrants. We have a significant immigrant population. And they're not— they pay taxes, they contribute enormously, and they're not superhuman, and they are justifiably angry at being treated differently and singled out as if we were somehow not making the same contribution or not vulnerable in the same ways as the rest of the country.

That's the reason it's become a political issue, because it's an issue of equity in these communities. That's the reason that the naturalization rate skyrocketed during the debate which led to welfare reform and the immigrant reform which was enacted in the same year. That was really largely about anger at the tone of the debate. Some of the comments you heard from Congressman Tancredo for example really struck a nerve with people who are here because they want to be part of this place and they want to participate and they contribute, and it's frustrating to have the argument focus on immigrants as if they were asking for a differential or special treatment when it's actually simply talking about equity and having the tax dollars that we pay to provide a social safety net be available when some of our families fall on hard times.

MR. STEIN: That's obviously not the whole answer. The enforcement of the sponsorship pledge is still not happening, aliens are not generally being deported as public charges.

The public, if we're going to have a national immigration debate, which we seem to be having from time to time, we have to come to terms with the fact that people never voted for an immigration policy that brings people in who are basically part of the working poor. There are employers in the country like the meat packers in Kansas and elsewhere who like this arrangement. They can go from paying the equivalent in today's dollars of $35 an hour for meat packing work from 35-40 years ago to paying $8 an hour, $9 an hour and trying to find a way to get taxpayers to pick up the costs. The states are saying well, it's all fine as long as the federal government pays. But the average American out there doesn't understand, where is the policy sense in a post-industrial information society allowing some employers to become dependent on low-skilled foreign labor? That issue is not only going to not go away, as the tax revenues deteriorate in this prolonged recession— I feel it personally. When you feel like the benefits in your own community are being cut back, voters aren't going to sit back idly by while we continue to admit the equivalent of the population of Canada every ten years practically with 40 percent of whom have no federal tax liability because their earnings are so low. It doesn't make sense.

MS. STEISEL: In 1996 NCSL strongly supported the creation of legal binding affidavits of support because we felt that was critical and we do support deeming. Having said that, we are now faced with a lot of folks who don't have sponsors. Either they come in for employment or they're refugees or they actually have been here a very long time at this point.

So in practicality, in a time when only five states have their budget targets meet their projections, where we have most states coping with budget deficits, what we have in fact is a shift of cost to the states.

Q: I wanted the panel— My name is Cynthia Garza. I'm with KVIA in El Paso.

I wanted you to take on the Bush Administration's consideration to reinstate food stamps to benefit the legal immigrants but to not include in that other safety net services such as health care. What is the panel's take on that?

MS. MUNOZ: The National Council of La Raza applauded the Bush Administration's proposal to restore food stamps. We were very happy to see it announced. We are very eager to see it enacted. Again, because it's an important support for families that are in the workforce and particularly for kids in those families.

We were very frustrated that with all of the very positive things that the President said about hard working people and the fact that they deserve access to the foodstamp program, we've been trying for several years now to provide access to the Medicaid program to pregnant women in those families, to children in those families, and it's very frustrating to say on the one hand we want people to be able to eat. On the other hand if they have medical needs we're not prepared to step up to the plate and make the same arguments on behalf of these same families with respect to the Medicaid program.

To have that portion of the proposal be framed as preventing dependency was particularly frustrating to folks, given that we're five years away from a complete exclusion in these safety net programs for immigrants who arrived after 1996 and because we really think that that's perpetuating a myth which led to a policy that went much farther than it ought to have gone.

MS. STEISEL: NCSL strongly believes, and we certainly represent the interests of state legislatures, that, well first of all we strongly support the Administration's proposal on food stamps. The Farm Bill is in conference right now. This is an issue currently being debated and we're just very pleased that the President has gone forward with his proposal. We support it.

On health care we support the option of states and creating an option for states in Medicaid and in SCHIP for legal immigrants. We think that this should be a state by state decision.

Similarly in TANF, we had hoped we would see some either further flexibility for states or restoration of benefits in the TANF program and we were disappointed not to see it.

MR. STEIN: I think there are enormous political implications to the Administration's failure to deliver any kind of immigration policy recommendation downstream that would deal with the enormous cost implications associated with the demands being represented by the immigration advocates. I don't see how we can continue down the track.

People who are citizens of other countries retain at all times the political allegiance of their home country, they have the right to go back to that country, to enjoy all the benefits that that country of their birth offers, and it's very hard for American taxpayers, for citizens to understand why?I cannot believe my own tax burden. Why my taxes have to go to pay for an immigration program that nobody really voted for in this country, not in any meaningful way.

Q: My name is Monica Sanchez, I work for the NOW Legal Defense Education Fund.

This has sort of been touched on by the panelists, but I just want to go ahead and directly ask it because it's something that I think is really important when you're talking about legal permanent residents and welfare.

It's my understanding that legal permanent residents pay the same taxes as citizens, and what I don't understand is if legal permanent residents pay taxes and they don't receive a benefit it's almost as if they're supporting the citizens rather than vice versa. I propose that if legal permanent residents aren't able to receive public benefits then they shouldn't be paying taxes for other people. And I propose that, I think it's actually the reverse situation and I would really appreciate all the panelists addressing those issues.

MS. MUNOZ: I appreciate you raising the point. That's why it feels like an equity issue to immigrant communities. In fact immigrants pay, as you've heard already, far more than they take out in services as it is. Immigrants tend to come when they're young and they're entering the workforce and while they're working age, so you haven't really made the investment because folks, because immigrants with children elsewhere and educated elsewhere, they come here when they're in their prime working years and they make enormous contributions. So if you look at the Social Security system as well as the federal tax system you really see that immigrants are critical to everybody else's well being, especially for the rest of us as we age.

But it's also very important that immigrants are not talking about doing less or having a different set of standards applied to us. What this debate is about is applying the same standards. We want the same responsibilities as the rest of this country. People come here to be part of it and to be full partners and fully contributing. so the equity question is not, you don't hear immigrants saying so we shouldn't have to pay taxes. What you hear immigrants saying is of course we pay taxes and we simply want to be treated as the equals that we are.

MR. STEIN: I would just caution you about going down that road of trying to measure tax contributions as a measure of entitlement eligibility. I would cut you a deal. If you can show me an immigrant that's paying more than $500 in federal tax liability a year, I would say those folks ought to get benefits. If they're getting earned income tax credits or have a negative tax liability, you know, no welfare, they probably shouldn't be here in the first place.

But immigration is ultimately about redistribution as a program. It's about the employers gaining the benefits of using immigration to hold down the wages. And it's about suppressing the wages and working conditions of American labor that's a direct substitute in those industries. It's about putting the money in the pockets of the employers and obviously the immigrants themselves through the wages that they're earning. Now on top of that you want to take tax money from American taxpayers and give it to immigrants as well.

The National Academy of Sciences when they studied the immigration flows found the aggregate economic benefit of immigration was marginal compared to the overall size of the economy. And clearly the skills composition of the flow is a great determinant on the economic impact of immigrants over their life time.

Somebody who's got a PhD in microprocessing who has some English language ability and doesn't have a lot of relatives here, who doesn't bring his parents, who has no means of earning a living or what have you, is going to outpace natives' taxpaying contributions and his income or her income will exceed natives' overnight. Someone who is illiterate in any language, fifth grade education, joining a community of a lot of relatives who live in poverty as well is unlikely to ever rise above the poverty level.

The economic arguments can really work both says.

MS. STEISEL: I guess I'd conclude by saying that in our view since the federal government does collect these taxes from working legal immigrants, our issue is that unlike in other programs where there's a shared state/federal partnership with that revenue, in this case they have decided not to share and not to have a state/federal strong partnership.

So it is our view overall that the federal government needs to come to the table on these issues because legal immigrants are living and working in our communities and their support services that states at their option would like to provide, and they're not being allowed that chance.

MS. KANE: I think this is bringing this panel to a close. I want to thank all three of you. If I give you one last word I have to give everybody a last word.

MR. STEIN: I want to say one thing very briefly about states. The state role and involvement on this issue has been over the last 30 years or so to not participate in the immigration debates in this country over how many people or who should come on the assumption that the costs should just all be federalized. As a result the states have kind of abdicated their responsibility to play a role in advising the federal government on the overall immigration levels and has reduced its role to being one of simply coming to the federal government and demanding more money.

MS. STEISEL: You know I disagree strongly and here's why.

(Laughter)

Not surprisingly because immigration is in the Constitution as a federal decision. We're very serious about federalism. These are federal decisions, not state decisions. Our organizations have made a choice to not engage in those because those are appropriately federal. Generally we think other decisions are appropriately states. But the federal government does have a responsibility to not abdicate its role and its responsibility when it makes its decisions and there are going to be impacts of funding.

MS. MUNOZ: Just very quickly, it's important to step back and look at the purpose of these reforms in the first place. If they're about getting people into the workforce and about providing them with the services that they need to get there we're shooting ourselves in the foot if we just wholesale exclude a segment of the population simply because they're immigrants.

MS. KANE: Thank you to all of you. Kent's just going to wrap it up.

MR. WEAVER: Very quickly, I said at the outset this is an area of continuing controversy and I think it is safe to say that we have not entirely resolved all of the controversies in the discussion this morning.

I'd say there are three areas of continuing disagreement. One is how do immigrants and employers view public benefits and how do they use them? There's widespread agreement I think among almost everyone that immigrants come here to work, but somewhat more disagreement on how the benefits actually get used and in particular whether they end up just being transferred to employers.

Second, there's clear disagreement about what should be done, what criteria should be used in establishing eligibility for immigrants to access benefits. Whether it should be residency, work history, citizenship, or whether as Congressman Becerra said, that's entirely the wrong standard. People should all be treated the same if they're residents. Disagreements about should we get serious about having a public charge, sponsorship and deeming provisions and if so, how do we make them enforceable?

A third disagreement is should different benefits have different rules? For example, should there be different rules for health programs and nutrition programs.

A third broad area of disagreement is on the politics of the program. Representative Tancredo said essentially that this is a bidding war that Republicans can't win. They made an initial miscalculation in restricting benefits to immigrants, something that he thought was morally right but politically dangerous. And that they're doomed to try to correct this political miscalculations even though they can't win.

So substantial continuing disagreement on what's happening, what we should do and what the politics are.

I want to thank all the participants on behalf of Andrea and Belle who's not here for a vigorous, informed and civil debate, and I think they provided a model for the larger debate that is going to be following over the next few months.

Thanks very much.