Reply #9: the stuff about welfare is dishonest

[Hamlette]

From your first link at FAIR:

Some people mistakenly think that immigrants are not eligible for welfare. Several years ago, Congress did attempt to render immigrants ineligible for most forms of welfare. However, subsequent backpedaling by Congress and the executive branch has undone most of those reforms.

snip

Legal immigrants are barred from all federal means-tested public benefits for five years after entering the country and barred from SSI and food stamps until citizenship. They are also barred from all federal means-tested public benefits for five years.7

Benefits available to immigrants include school lunch and breakfast programs, immunizations, emergency medical services, disaster relief, and others programs that are necessary to protect life and safety as identified by the attorney general, regardless of immigration status.8

Illegal immigrants are barred from the following federal public benefits: grants, contracts, loans, licenses, retirement, welfare, health, disability, public or assisted housing, post secondary education, food assistance, and unemployment benefits. States are barred from providing state or locally funded benefits to illegal immigrants unless a state law is enacted granting such authority.9

end quote

Notice how they start the web page saying people mistakenly think immigrants are not eligible for welfare. LEGAL immigrants are eligible for some things, after 5 years. ILLEGAL immigrants ARE NEVER eligible for welfare.

If you believe we are admitting too many LEGAL immigrants, go to Congress, have them change the number of people admitted legally. I thought most of these people complained about illegal immigrants but they mix the terms in the argument.

Even if there is an anchor child in the household, only the CHILD gets food stamps, not the illegal parent. And the child gets free lunch, schooling, medicaid etc (if otherwise eligible...ie poor). If you don't like that, do away with the "citizenship if you are born here" provisions in the law.

I'm a welfare attorney and while I agree with FAIR on some things (the population "bomb" argument) they are dead ass wrong on the welfare argument. Illegal immigrants don't get nothing. Period. (Incidently, we verify everything for all welfare recipients so the myth that they can get past us is not true either. If you think big brother is watching you, you don't know the half of it. We have a computer tie in to just about every data base in the world and it performs automatic verifications and updates every night.)

Even if these numbers are correct, stop the war in Iraq for a couple of days and you damn near pay for the whole thing.