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SUMMARY
CONTEXT FOR THE RESTORATIONS
The expansion of food stamp eligibility for legal immigrants authorized by the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 ("Farm Bill") is taking place against a backdrop of high, steady levels of immigration. By 2000, one quarter of low-income children in the United States had immigrant parents. In the majority of low-income immigrant families, the children were eligible for food stamps because they were citizens, while their parents were often barred from eligibility because they were undocumented or ineligible legal noncitizens.
Since the inception of the current Food Stamp Program (FSP) in 1977, undocumented immigrants have never been eligible for benefits. However, the eligibility rules for legal noncitizens have changed several times in recent years. The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA)—or welfare reform—made most legal noncitizens ineligible for food stamps, with limited exceptions. In 1998 the Agriculture Research, Extension and Education Reform Act restored eligibility to legal noncitizen children, elders, and disabled individuals who entered the United States before PRWORA's enactment on August 22, 1996. The 2002 Farm Bill broadly restored eligibility for legal noncitizens who:
- Were disabled, regardless of date of entry, effective October 2002;
- Had been in the United States at least five years, effective April 2003; and
- Were children ages 18 and under, regardless of date of entry, effective October 2003.
STUDY PURPOSE
In terms of policy, the significance of the food stamp restorations to legal immigrants should not be understated: the provisions were expected to become the most expensive and significant portion of the $6.4 billion in nutrition assistance authorized by the Farm Bill (Food and Nutrition Service 2002a). Moreover, for the first time since welfare reform, the 2002 law extended a means-tested federal benefit to legal noncitizen children who had lived in the United States for less than five years. (The five-year waiting period still applies to most legal immigrant adults for the FSP and to most legal noncitizen adults and children for welfare and Medicaid.) While the Farm Bill was the third piece of legislation to restore public benefits to noncitizens since PRWORA's enactment in 1996,1 no previous restoration has been subjected to the kind of analysis of implementations and effects we present here. The study is important, then, because it can begin to help us understand:
- Variation in state and local approaches to implementing the eligibility restorations;
- The institutional challenges to reversing previous eligibility restrictions, especially in areas with large low-income noncitizen populations;
- The degree to which restorations and other policies can overcome what might be referred to as "chilling effects" on program participation created by earlier eligibility restrictions (Fix and Passel 1999);
- The effects on differing populations—elders, children and working age adults; noncitizens with five years of legal residency and those without;
- The degree to which the restoration brought new immigrant households to the FSP, versus extending more benefits to households already receiving benefits but with some legal immigrant members;
- The potential impacts of sponsor deeming and liability policies whose impacts may only now be coming into view, and that might lead to reduced participation among newly eligible noncitizens; and
- The need for strategic investments in outreach and other efforts to improve access and boost participation among targeted populations.
STUDY METHODS
This report, based on a two-year study funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), focuses primarily on the implementation of the three legal immigrant food stamp restorations enacted under the 2002 Farm Bill. The study included six of the seven states with the largest immigrant populations (California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, and
Massachusetts) and two "new growth" states with rapidly increasing immigrant populations (North Carolina and Tennessee). Study methods included phone calls to state food stamp administrators during fall 2002, spring 2003 and fall 2003, as well as phone calls or visits to local food stamp offices in summer 2003.
The restoration of food stamp benefits to legal noncitizens took place during a time when FNS and state food stamp agencies were trying to improve client access and when caseloads were rising generally due to a downturn in the U.S. economy. Between 2000 and 2003, total FSP enrollment grew by 24 percent nationally, from 17 to 21 million people. Study respondents attributed caseload increases in their states mostly to declining economic conditions but also to changes in FSP policies that expanded eligibility and streamlined application and recertification procedures.
IMPLEMENTATION AND PRELIMINARY IMPACT OF THE RESTORATIONS
We found that the Farm Bill's legal immigrant restorations were implemented in a timely fashion in our study states, and short-term targets for increased noncitizen participation in the FSP were met. According to our best estimates, over 150,000 legal noncitizens were added to the FSP rolls across the eight states—above the FNS national target of 120,000 for 2003, and well on schedule to meet the FNS goal of enrolling 400,000 legal noncitizens nationwide by 2006. The April 2003 restoration, the broadest of the three, restored benefits to approximately 135,000 noncitizens with five years of legal residency. The October 2003 change restored benefits to about 18,000 legal noncitizen children, while the October 2002 restoration affected relatively small number of disabled legal noncitizens—less than 4,000.
The majority of legal noncitizens added to the caseload were former state food assistance beneficiaries in California (almost 100,000), Massachusetts (4,000) and New Jersey (2,000). While the restorations yielded a significant cost shift from these states back to the federal government, legal immigrants and their households did not see any changes in benefit levels. Following the restorations, California was the only study state that retained a separate, state-funded food assistance program for noncitizens. California's program included almost 10,000 noncitizens with less than five years of legal residency in late 2003.
There were also increases in legal noncitizen food stamp caseloads in Texas (25,000), Florida (22,000) and Illinois (4,000). For the most part, the legal noncitizens whose benefits were restored in these states lived in mixed citizenship households with U.S.-born citizen children who were already receiving benefits before the restorations. In most cases, the addition of a newly eligible member meant that these households' benefit allocations increased, although in a few cases
benefits actually decreased when working adults were added and their earnings were weighted more heavily in benefit calculations.
In two states—North Carolina and Tennessee—we were told that only a small number of noncitizens were affected by the restorations, and no legal noncitizen caseload data were available. These two new growth states have a much higher share of immigrants who arrived within the last five years or are undocumented immigrants, and they also have much lower total immigrant
populations when compared to the other six states in the study.
We found little evidence in the study states that the restorations extended food stamp benefits to significant numbers of immigrant households without previous food stamp participation, though with time these numbers may grow.
State and local administrators generally did not report any major challenges in implementing the Farm Bill restorations. Eligibility workers also indicated the changes were, for the most part, straightforward and easy to implement. The exception was the October 2002 restoration, which required eligibility workers to check for receipt of disability benefits across several programs in some of the states. Nonetheless, noncitizen FSP eligibility determination remains a highly complex
process. One explanation why so few administrative challenges were reported could be the limited implementation to date of the sponsor deeming and liability requirements.
NEW COMPLICATED SPONSOR DEEMING RULES
While the Farm Bill's new rules for legal immigrants simplified eligibility determination in most cases, the process may be complicated and noncitizen applicants deterred by new sponsor deeming and liability rules that went into effect at the end of 1997. These rules were legislated by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, and supplement the bars to legal immigrant eligibility set out in the welfare reform act. Except for refugees, most legal immigrants have individual sponsors, who must provide financial support to the immigrants until they become citizens. Whenever a sponsored legal immigrant applies for food stamps, the sponsor's income may be counted as available to the immigrant's household for purposes of food stamp eligibility, often disqualifying the immigrants' household for benefits. Additionally, states may require sponsors to pay back the value of benefits issued to the immigrants they sponsored, although no states in our study have developed policies to do so. Sponsor deeming rules currently affect a very small fraction of the noncitizens with five years of legal residency who became eligible for food stamps under the April 2003 restoration. That fraction is expected to grow over time, however, as the number of legal immigrants who entered after 1997, have completed five years of residency, and have not become U.S. citizens increases.
Only three of our eight study states—California, Florida and Massachusetts—had implemented sponsor deeming policies and encountered enough cases with sponsored legal immigrants to understand and document their experiences. Preliminary evidence from these states suggest that the new deeming rules leave noncitizen FSP applicants with tough choices: (1) agree to report the
sponsor's income and have this income included as part of the household's income for eligibility purposes; (2) claim an "indigence" exemption from the deeming requirement, which results in the names of the immigrant and his or her sponsor being reported to the U.S. Attorney General; or (3) opt out of the case and have benefits calculated as if the immigrant were ineligible. Deeming also potentially limits participation in other ways, since immigrants may be unable or unwilling to
contact their sponsors or request that they share sensitive information about income and resources with a government agency.
LIMITED PUBLICITY AND OUTREACH FOR THE RESTORATIONS
The impact of the Farm Bill restorations may also be muted by limited publicity and little food stamp outreach directed to immigrant populations. Illinois is the only study state in which we encountered a major public campaign that focused specifically on the legal immigrant restorations. In the other states restorationspecific outreach activities generally consisted of notifying advocacy networks about the restoration at regularly scheduled meetings and through the dissemination of general informational materials.
The limited food stamp outreach activities we observed were conducted by non-profit organizations with little state support but in some cases, substantial funding through federal outreach grants from FNS. Only Texas had a state-funded food stamp outreach program, which did not target immigrants specifically but focused on six metropolitan counties with large immigrant populations. Illinois had a state-funded outreach program targeting immigrants for a range of benefits, including refugee assistance, the FSP and public health insurance programs. In California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and North Carolina, agencies that had received FNS outreach grants were conducting more general food stamp outreach using a variety of methods, including computer-based prescreening for eligibility.
OTHER NONCITIZEN FOOD STAMP ISSUES
Finally, noncitizens continue to face several barriers when applying for food stamps and other public benefit programs. Customer service had been affected by FSP administrative budget cuts in several of the study states, making it harder for noncitizens and others to get their applications completed and to follow up when there are problems with their cases. Some food stamp offices we visited— particularly those in larger urban areas—had been hard hit by recent budget cuts, and caseloads as high as 800 or 1,000 per worker were making it more and more difficult for workers to communicate and interact with clients. Inadequate translation and interpretation continued to affect access, especially when it comes to clients who do speak neither English nor Spanish, although all of the study states were making progress in this area. Noncitizens continue to be concerned about the consequences of benefit receipt for their naturalization applications and ability to sponsor relatives; in some cases they fear deportation of undocumented family members. In California and Texas, applicants for the FSP are fingerprinted, deterring some noncitizens from
applying.
Notes from this section
1 In 1997 Congress restored Supplemental Security Income (SSI) along with SSI-linked Medicaid to all elderly and disabled legal immigrants who had been receiving SSI when PRWORA was enacted, and made all legal immigrants who arrived in the United States before PRWORA's enactment eligible to receive SSI if they became disabled in the future (The Balanced Budget Act of 1997, PL 105-33). Congress later extended food stamp benefits to legal immigrant children and to elderly and disabled legal immigrants who arrived before enactment (The Agriculture, Research, Extension and Education Reform Act, PL 105-185, 1998) (Fix and Passel 2002).
Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).
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