TANSTAAFL

“TANSTAAFL: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”

-Robert A. Heinlein

Today I watched this video clip from Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” in which Al Madrigal interviews Butler County, Ohio, Sheriff Richard Jones. In the video, Sheriff Jones makes very strong statements against undocumented immigrants, stating that they receive “free stuff”, such as a “computer, car payments, house payments, free medical care.”

Unfortunately, Sheriff Jones is not the only one perpetuating this idea. A Google search of “illegal immigrants free stuff” resulted in a host of articles, blog posts, and websites, with headlines like these:

• Come To America and Take Advantage of Our Free Stuff
• Undocumented Immigrants to Include More Free Stuff
• Illegal Immigrants Demand Free Obamacare

As an American who previously received welfare benefits many years ago, it is difficult for me to see how anyone without the proper papers could even apply for any sort of assistance. In my home state of Kentucky, applicants for SNAP (food stamps), Medicaid, Section 8 housing, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) must jump through flaming hula hoops of bureaucracy to be eligible for assistance. Verification documents include Social Security numbers and birthdates for all household members, copies of utility bills, lease agreements, paychecks stubs, signed affidavits from family and/or friends, etc. Of course, the process is repeated regularly to ensure continuing eligibility. To gain a greater understanding and satisfy my curiosity (and also to avoid writing a paper about Florence Nightingale’s Notes on Nursing), I set out on an internet adventure to find out what I could about public benefits for undocumented immigrants.

What I found on my virtual travels was The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA). Remember back in the nineties when Republicans swore a blood oath to the American people that they would stop lazy poor people from stealing tax money to buy unnecessary luxuries like food and shelter? The result was PRWORA. (Full Disclosure: The entire file is 251 pages. I didn’t read the whole thing. But if you’re interested, you can find it online here.) Title IV of PRWORA deals solely with regulations on benefits for “aliens” and specifically outlines what kind of benefits “aliens” are eligible and not eligible to receive. People who are not considered to be “qualified aliens,” that is, immigrants who came to the US through one of many pre-approved legal channels , are eligible to receive “public benefits” only in the following situations:

• Treatment of an emergency medical condition (such as someone who is in active labor or is having a heart attack – there is a whole separate law about hospitals being required to provide emergency care)
• Disaster relief (for instance, if there just happens to be a flood or tornado in the area where they are living)
• Immunizations (This is really beneficial for everyone.)
• Soup kitchens, crisis counseling, and short-term shelter that is necessary for the protection of life and safety, which deliver resources at the community level, and at the discretion of the Attorney General (so basically we are talking homeless shelters)

PRWORA also says that immigrants who are not “qualified aliens” are not eligible for “any retirement, welfare, health, disability, public or assisted housing, post-secondary education, food assistance, unemployment benefit, or any other similar benefit for which payments or assistance are provided to an individual, household, or family eligibility unit by an agency of the United States.”

If you scroll down a few more pages, the whole section repeats itself again in regards to state and local benefits. There are also some exceptions listed, such as a grandfather clause for people already receiving benefits, and exceptions for refugees. Another interesting item is that even immigrants who arrived here through the “proper” legal channels are not eligible for any of those benefits for AT LEAST five years.

As best as I can tell, the issue of “illegals” getting free government handouts was already settled almost twenty years ago. There has literally already been a law on the books about this very issue since 1996. However, for some reason, there is a section of the voting public that keeps repeating this same urban legend over and over. The main reason for the confusion seems to lie in the fact that children born in the US from undocumented immigrant parents are eligible for public assistance and public education. Non-citizen parents can apply for SNAP or housing in their children’s names, although most do not, for fear of being discovered by immigration officials. However, providing assistance and education to US children born from immigrant parents is not new, and has been going on for generations. I would imagine that many of the grandparents of the anti-immigration set were taught to speak English for the first time in American classrooms, and not from their Russian- or German-speaking immigrant parents.

I can also imagine that the same people complaining today about “Mexicans taking our jobs,” if transported back in time, would complain about the “filthy Irish” or the “Catholic Hordes.” There have always been people who will find a reason to complain if the status quo changes, and feel threatened by people who are different. The anti-immigration argument is not REALLY about jobs, or free stuff, or having to press 1 for English. These are excuses to cover up the fact that they are simply afraid of losing power to a fast-growing ethnic group in which they are not included.

If you would like to read more about immigration, I found several other great posts along the way, namely this one at Cro-Modern with lots of good sources, and another from the Southern Poverty Law Center that explains why if my European ancestors came to the US today the same way they came in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, they would now be considered “illegals,” too.