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As population soars--especially as the population of uneducated and poorly paid illegal aliens soars--and as they take jobs which legal immigrants might have desired at reasonable wages--legal immigrants struggle to find the financial opportunities they were figuratively and literally banking on. Legal immigrants, finding the jobs they used to have are gone, often turn to welfare to care for their families.
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POPULATION & POVERTY
Among households in the U.S. in which the head of household is U.S. born, approximately 15% use one or more basic welfare programs, i. e., Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), food stamps, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and/or Medicaid. However, among households in the U.S. in which the head of household is not U.S. born, approximately 23% use one or more basic welfare programs. (Source: Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) analysis of March, 2002 Current Population Survey data collected by the Census Bureau.)
Why should this be the case? As Dr. Steven A. Camarota of CIS wrote in a March, 2003 report, “The high rate of welfare use associated with immigrants is not explained by unwillingness to work. In 2001, almost 80% of immigrant households using welfare had at least one person working. One of the main reasons for the heavy reliance of immigrants on welfare programs is that a very large share have little education. The American economy offers very limited opportunities to such workers, and as a result, many immigrants who work are still eligible for welfare because of their low incomes.”
Even the wages, benefits, and working conditions of jobs legal immigrants do find are often pegged at low levels, because of employers’ ability to replace legal immigrants with illegal aliens. Thus, employers who hire immigrant workers at low wages let taxpayers pay for services such workers can’t afford.
There are many different ways to define and to measure poverty. However, if we assume welfare use suggests family income provides an unsatisfactory standard of living, one might conclude the U.S. is importing poverty . . . along with higher tax bills.
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©2010 Californians for Population Stabilization. All Rights Reserved
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