c. 1997 Religion News Service
WASHINGTON _ Religious groups have mounted an intense lobbying effort on Capitol Hill to ease a provision of last year’s welfare bill that one activist called a”draconian and radical attack on the most vulnerable part of the population”_ elderly legal immigrants.
The Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish groups are using letters from the grassroots, Capitol Hill visits by Washington activists, and even demonstrations and rallies to urge Congress to revisit the issue before too many elderly immigrants are forced from the welfare rolls.
Although legislation has been introduced that would meet the religious groups’ concerns, there has been no congressional movement on the issue as yet.
The provision, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will save the government an estimated $23.7 billion, ends eligibility for non-citizen legal immigrants in the Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid programs, two of the governments primary anti-poverty safety net measures.
Legal immigrants make up about 5 percent of the population receiving public assistance. The provision was adopted as part of last year’s sweeping overhaul of the nation’s welfare system in an effort to move people off welfare and into work.
John Fredriksson, a policy analyst for Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, one of the major groups aiding immigrants and fighting to continue the benefits, called the provision”mean spirited.””This is not welfare reform,”Fredriksson said.”These people can’t go to work by definition: They’re too old or disabled. The fundamental issue is that the people who are being cut off are not employable at all.” John Swenson, executive director of the Migration Refugee Service, a branch of the U.S. Catholic Conference and also a major agency in the resettlement of refugees and legal immigrants, called the law unjust, saying it was”almost exclusively a financial measure, achieved on the back of legal immigrants.” The law requires immigrants to have been in the country for five years and to have worked 40 quarters before they are eligible for benefits in the two programs.
Religious groups want Congress to consider striking the measure from last year’s bill altogether, or, failing that, to consider President Clinton’s proposal to soften the law be changing the eligibility provisions. At a minimum, they are asking Congress to postpone the date _ August 22 _ by which it goes fully into effect.
They see the law as unfair because many being cut from the rolls are not able to work.”We feel it’s an unjust policy,”said Ned Stowe, an analyst at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Quaker lobbying office in Washington.”We see it as a fundamental Christian duty to care for those in need. They should be treated with justice and dignity as we would anyone.” President Clinton has proposed continuing essential cash and medical assistance for children of legal immigrants, protecting immigrants who become disabled after arriving in the United States, allowing refugees and asylum seekers seven years instead of five of exemption from welfare restrictions, and delaying the ban for immigrants receiving food stamps until September 30, the end of Fiscal Year 1997.
Congress must act soon, Fredriksson said, because once the budget plan for Fiscal 1998 _ which begins Oct. 1 _ is in place, it will be difficult to appropriate funds for public assistance to immigrants.”Putting off the cuts is just postponing the pain,”he said.”It’s like telling a cancer patient to go home and take three aspirin _ you won’t have a headache for a while, but you’re still going to die.” Some legal immigrants, distressed by the news they could be cut from SSI and Medicaid programs, have already committed suicide, according to officials at Roman Catholic and Protestant aid agencies.
In a rally on Capitol Hill sponsored by the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ) and the American Association of Jews from the Former Soviet Union (AAJFSU) in April, leaders called for”compassion and justice for vulnerable immigrants and refugees.” Immigrant activists promised congressional budget cutters they would”play electoral hardball in November”if Congress does not reverse the cuts in public assistance to legal immigrants and allow more time for refugees to become citizens.
Democrats have proposed a number of bills that would restore benefits to elderly and disabled immigrants who are unable to work.
A plan by Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., would repeal the measure and reduce corporate tax breaks to raise the $23.7 billion needed to pay for the benefits over six years. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., has a similar version in the House.
The Republican leadership, however, has said it does not want to reopen the welfare debate for fear that doing so would open the floodgates to other changes and undermine the long-sought legislation enacted last year.
MJP END JONGSMA
