Yes

by help, i'm surrounded by liberals

Created on: February 29, 2008

Should illegal immigrants be entitled to receive benefits?

The United States relationship with the undocumented community and whether they should receive benefits cannot be answered with a simple no or yes answer, so I'm going to err on the side of human rights and say yes.

In 1997 we passed the Personal Work and Responsibility Act, which was a program designed to help provide temporary cash assistance to low income women and families who are working, and help get them back to work, by providing free or affordable child care.
Since the beginning, the Federal rules for "Temporary Assistance to Needy Families" requires women who receive the cash benefits to eventually attend work training, and undocumented citizens, including PRUCOL aliens, were never qualified to recieve cash grants for this program.

However, there was a loophole in the program.

The babies of undocumented women, are not considered "undocumented", but are given cash benefits as citizens, under the "Zero Parent" category for funding.

As with all funding and programs, the Federal government has one set of rules for a program, and the state has another, especially the state of California

California created a wider choice of options that women could do INSTEAD of work, which still allowed them to qualify for cash, such

Advocates and legislation was passed in California to allow undocumented women who did not speak "English" to be exempted from the work requirements, and even though they were not qualified to receive the cash benefits.

Social service agencies provided loophole programs for undocumented women to receive funding to attend training,through state legislation and advocacy, and the legal people in the household received cash by a loophole which categorizes other members in the immediate household of the undocumented woman as "assistance units".

Hispanic advocacy groups in California such as the Mexican Opportunity Fund, were given huge government grants to run the "alternative payments programs" which provide babysitting cash money to CalWorks recipients.

The Mexican Opportunity Fund is the largest alternative payments provider in California
receiving millions of dollars worth of funding, to manage.

This large advocacy program, and other splinter special interest "Hispanic" programs like this have focused on providing the undocumented women and the Hispanic community with cash assistance.

Ten years since the program began, it has grown over 890% past it's original budget, and has helped fuel a baby boom of undocumented Hispanic women in Southern California.

California has a responsibility to it's American citizens and legal residents to help work through this situation, and so far, it has not been able to do this.

After several amnesties undocumented people, who have been encouraged by their legal residents to come to California, have children who are legal United States citizens, qualify for benefits which range from school lunches to low income housing.

I believe the best way forward for California, and it's undocumented population is not to cut them off of benefits, but to first and foremost instill some accountability into our benefits system, and so far, state and federal government has not been able to come up with an identification program which is acceptable to United States citizens or undocumented citizens and their advocates.

A few years ago, advocates were pushing the legislature to give the undocumented community identification, while Californians did not want this.

The situation changed dramatically when immigration legislation and federal rulings were close to passing, which would fine employers who hired undocumented citizens.

Powerful unions who were originally behind the legislation from the beginning, were now it's biggest enemies. They blocked the legislation, and this is where we stand today.

One solution would be to fine the employee's small fine's instead of the employers. Small fines might be more acceptable to both undocumented citizens, and employers and allow state governments with large immigrant populations to move forward with passing I.D.

In the meantime, their are kids to feed and women to educate and cutting off benefits is not an option for humanitarian reasons.

However, getting an identification system going is important. There is alot of fraud that goes along with people not having secure I.D. or household members who don't pay taxes not reporting household earnings. Many women simply wouldn't qualify if the household earning were reported accurately, and secure identification would go a long way towards solving this, though I am not going to hold my breath waiting for it.

California has a terribly blocked legislature which doesn't really move forward on these issues, and so, compromise may not be possible here.

I think the best bet for reducing benefits to the undocumented citizen, is to work with the Hispanic community to convince their people not to invite MORE undocumented people.

From a Federal perspective, many of these originally "undocumented" women, will become sponsored for green cards, NO MATTER WHAT ADVOCATES TELL YOU, about the "poor" undocumented people. It is estimated that roughly 40% of all undocumented people are "visa overstays", and though it is a long drawn out process in some cases, many many of these people will eventually qualify for green cards.

The United States has a generous green card program which gives over 1.2 MILLION green cards away every year. I believe the Federal government should enforce the rules on the "Affidavit of Sponsorship" which asks green card sponsors to sign a waiver guaranteeing that they take financial responsibility for "life" of their sponsee's, and will not put them on public benefits.

While I think this rule is very stern, again, I think having an identification system, would help the United States Custom and Immigration determine if green card sponsors need to work harder to take care of the loved one's they have invited to the United States, whether they started off here legally or not.

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