A Profile of Low-Income Working Immigrant Families

No. B-67 in Series, "New Federalism: National Survey of America's Families"

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Immigrants are a large and growing part of America's labor force. They accounted for half the growth in the U.S. workforce during the 1990s (Sum, Fogg, and Harrington 2002). In 2001, immigrants were 11 percent of the U.S. population, but 14 percent of all workers and 20 percent of low-wage workers in the U.S. economy (Capps, Fix et al. 2003).¹ Immigrants are overrepresented among all U.S. workers but especially among lower-paid workers.

Many Americans work hard yet struggle to pay bills and provide for their children (Acs, Ross Phillips, and McKenzie 2000). Immigrant families are no exception, since such a high share of immigrant workers earns low wages. In 2001, one-quarter of all children living in low-income families had one or more foreign-born parents (Fix, Zimmermann, and Passel 2001). Almost half (47 percent) of all low-income immigrant families fit our definition of working families, where adults on average worked at least part-time (1,000 hours) in 2001.² For low-income native families, this rate is 40 percent. These figures suggest that unemployment, underemployment, and episodic employment are common for low-income families headed by both immigrants and natives.

Despite similar levels of work effort among their parents, children of immigrants are substantially more likely than children with U.S.-born parents to be poor, have food-related problems, live in crowded housing, lack health insurance, and be in fair or poor health (Capps 2001; Reardon-Anderson, Capps, and Fix 2002). While children of immigrants exhibit high levels of need for public benefits and services, current laws restrict immigrant eligibility for many major federal and statefunded programs. Undocumented immigrants are generally ineligible for all public benefits except emergency health services. The 1996 welfare reform law restricted many legal immigrants' eligibility for these programs as well (Fix and Passel 2002).

Despite significant benefit restorations in 1997 and 2002, most legal immigrants with less than five years of residency in the United States are ineligible for cash welfare, food assistance, public health insurance, housing assistance, and other major federal benefits (National Immigration Law Center 2002).³ Although over three-quarters of children in immigrant families are U.S. citizens and therefore not subject to these eligibility bars (Capps 2001), their access to benefits may be affected by their parents' lack of citizenship, as well as other factors including language barriers, cultural misunderstandings, and fear of interaction with government agencies (Rodriguez, Hagan, and Capps 2004).

In previous studies, we profiled immigrant workers. In this brief we extend that analysis to benefit and service use among families of immigrant workers with children. Our analyses are based on data from the 2002 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF).⁴ The benefits examined here include the Earned Income Tax Credit, cash welfare, food stamps, housing assistance, health insurance coverage, and child care.

Notes from this section

1. We define low-wage workers as those earning less than twice the minimum wage. In 2001 the minimum wage (set by the federal government at $5.15 an hour) was effective in all but 11 states, which set minimum wage levels higher than the federal standard.

2. This includes families where both parents worked part-time as well as those in which one parent worked full-time and the other parent did not work at all.

3. Currently, eligibility for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and for Medicaid/State Children's Health Insurance Program is limited to legal immigrants who have been in the United States for at least five years or fit into certain exempt groups, including refugees and asylees. In 2003 food stamps eligibility was restored to all legal immigrant children regardless of length of U.S. residency, but legal immigrant adults must be in the country for at least five years or fit into an exempt group to be eligible for food stamps. As of spring 2005, a limited number of state and local governments provided comparable cash assistance, food assistance, and/or health insurance to some legal immigrants ineligible for federal benefits. None of these state or local programs extend eligibility to undocumented immigrants, with the exception of undocumented children, who are eligible for health insurance in New York and some California counties.

4. The NSAF provides information on a nationally representative sample of the civilian, noninstitutionalized populationunder age 65 and their families; it also provides state-representative data for 13 states. For more information on the survey methods and data reliability, see Abi-Habib, Safir, and Triplett (2004).

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