Compared to 30% of native households.
By Raif Karerat
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A new study by the Center for Immigration Studies has revealed that more than half of the nation’s immigrants receive some sort of government welfare.
About 51 percent of immigrant-led households receive at least one kind of welfare benefit, including Medicaid, food stamps, school lunches and housing assistance, compared to 30 percent for native-led households, according to the report from the CIS, an organization that advocates for lower levels of immigration.
The numbers increase for households with children, with 76 percent of immigrant-led households receiving welfare, compared to 52 percent for the native-born.
Assuming immigration is supposed to benefit the United States, then the key policy question is whether immigrants in the United States, whose presence reflects our immigration policy, use welfare at higher rates than natives,” wrote Steven Camarota, director of research at the center and author of the report. “More specifically, what criteria for immigrant admission might be used when admitting immigrants if self-sufficiency is a policy goal,” he continued.
“This should not be understood as some kind of defect or moral failing on the part of immigrants,” Camarota said about the findings. “Rather, what it represents is a system that allows a lot of less-educated immigrants to settle in the country, who then earn modest wages and are eligible for a very generous welfare system.”
According to USA Today, Linda Chavez agrees with Camarota that the country’s welfare system is too large and too costly. However, Chavez, a self-professed conservative who worked in President Reagan’s administration, said it’s irresponsible to say immigrants are taking advantage of the country’s welfare system any more than native-born Americans.
Chavez told USA Today that today’s immigrants, like all other immigrant waves in the country’s history, start off poorer and have lower levels of education, making it unfair to compare their welfare use to the long-established native-born population. She said immigrants have larger households, making it more likely that one person in that household will receive some kind of welfare benefit. She also stated many benefits counted in the study are going to U.S.-born children of immigrants, skewing the findings even more.
Chavez, president of the Becoming American Institute, a conservative group that supports higher levels of legal immigration to reduce illegal immigration, claimed studies should instead focus on the children of immigrants.
“These kids who get subsidized school lunches today will go on to graduate high school … will go on to college and move up to the middle class of America,” Chavez remarked. “Every time we have a nativist backlash in our history, we forget that we see immigrants change very rapidly in the second generation.”