THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 5, 1995 TAG: 9504050001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
The GOP's Contract With America has been considerably bashed for proposing that some welfare benefits be denied legal immigrants who have not become citizens. Yet the case for doing so is persuasive. Without reform, Supplemental Security Insurance, or SSI, may become a way of retirement for increasing numbers of elderly immigrants.
According to recent testimony before Congress, 738,000 legal immigrants received SSI last year - almost six times as many recipients as in 1982. Most are elderly. Most are aware of U.S. welfare policies and procedures before they arrive, or learn them shortly thereafter from family, friends or ethnic publications. Most apply for public assistance within five years of their arrival here.
Yet most were sponsored by relatives under immigration laws which require a promise that new arrivals will not become a public burden, require a showing that the sponsoring relatives can support them and include provision to deport legal immigrants who ``become a public charge'' within five years of entry.
After three years in the States, however, elderly immigrants may apply for SSI and Medicaid. And so many are doing so that between now and 2004 the bill to U.S. taxpayers for some 3 million non-citizens on SSI and Medicaid will total more than $328 billion - if SSI and Medicaid costs projected last year by the House Ways and Means Committee are correct, and if eligibility rules for resident aliens are not tightened.
Many of these elderly immigrants come from countries that are politically oppressed. In California, for instance, 66 percent of elderly Russian immigrants received public assistance, and 55 percent of Chinese. Nationwide, however, the greatest number of elderly immigrants who receive SSI come from Mexico. Many come also from the Dominican Republic, India, South Korea and the Philippines.
Preference in filling legal immigration quotas has long been given to relatives of immigrants already here. It is compassionate, and sensible, so long as the relatives sponsoring an arrival follow through on their duty to do so. Most sponsors do support their elderly relatives. Most who don't could. Yet immigrants who are elderly, legal and signed up for welfare as soon as they are eligible are among the fastest-growing groups dependent on welfare programs.
Like other Contract provisions, critics deride the proposal to exclude legal immigrants from welfare benefits as heartless. But those benefits are intended for citizens who lack other sources of assistance and need temporary help, not an indefinite claim. Families unable or unwilling to care for their elderly members are a difficult enough problem for America to solve regarding its citizens. With that unresolved, it makes no sense to ignore existing laws against inviting more dependents in. by CNB