Speech #1040203032

data track households over a 32month period This allows us to determine if immigrant welfare participation is temporaryperhaps the result of dislocation and adjustmentor longterm and possibly permanent. The evidence is disturbing. During the early 1990s. nearly a third (31.3 percent) of immigrant households participated in welfare programs at some point in the tracking period. Only just over a fifth (22.7 percent) of nativeborn households did so. And 10.3 percent of immigrant households received benefits through the entire period. v. 7.3 percent of nativeborn households. Because the Bureau of the Census began to collect the SIPP data in 1984. we can use it to assess if there have been any noticeable changes in immigrant welfare use. It turns out there has been a very rapid rise. During the mid1980s. the probability that an immigrant household received some type of assistance was 17.7 percent v. 14.6 percent for natives. a gap of 3.1 percentage points. By the early 1990s. recipient Immigrant households had risen to 20.7 percent. v. 14.1 percent for natives. The immigrantnative "welfare gap." therefore. more than doubled in loss than a decade. Thus immigrants are not only more likely to have some exposure to the welfare system. they are also more likely to be "permanent" recipients. And the trend is getting worse. Unless eligibility requirements are made much more stringent. much of the welfare use that we see now in the immigrant population may remain with us for some time. This raises troubling questions about the impact of this longterm dependency on the immigrantsand on their U.S.-born children. There is huge variation in welfare participation among immigrant groups. For example. about 4.3 percent of households originating in Germany. 26.8 percent of households originating in Mexico. and 40.6 per cent of households originating in the former Soviet Union are covered by Medicaid. Similarly. about 17.2 per cent of households originating in Italy. 36 per cent from Mexico and over 50 per cent in the Dominican Republic received some sort of welfare benefit. A more careful look at these nationalorigin differentials reveals an interesting pattern: nationalorigin groups tend to "major" in particular types of benefit. For example. Mexican immigrants are 50 per cent more likely to receive energy assistance than Cuban immigrants. But Cubans are more likely to receive housing benefits than Mexicans.