Speech #1040203584

I think we ought to be doing it with children. and I support the fact we will be doing it with these children in any event. But you have to get down to the hard line of dollars and cents of it. which is so often the final criteria here. what makes sense from a dollars and cents point of view. But this bill makes it much harder for legal immigrants to participate in these same programs. The same ones that illegal immigrants qualify for automatically. no questions asked. and this result Is preposterous. Legal Immigrants play by the rules and come In under the law. They work. raise their families. pay taxes. and serve in the Armed Forces. They are here legally. Legal immigrants do not seek to cross the border. or overstay their visas. They come here the right way. They waited in line until a visa in the United States was available. And. by and large. they are here as the result of reunifying familiesfamilies. Legal Immigrants should not have to Jump through a series of hoops which do not apply to illegal immigrants. This bill discriminates against those who play by the rules. Under the current law. legal immigrants have restricted access to the needbased programsthe AFDC. Social Security. SSI. and food stamps. Their sponsors Income is deemed under these programs. Deeming means that the welfare offices consider both the sponsors and the immigrants income in determining whether the immigrant meets the income guidelines for the particular assistance for which the Immigrant may apply. For example. if an immigrant sponsor earns $30.000 per year and the immigrant earns $10.000 per year. the immigrant is deemed to make $40.000 per year which pushes the immigrant above the Income guidelines to qualify for particular assistance programs. For legal immigrants. the deeming provisions in this bill affect not only the AFDC. SSI. and food stamps. but every other needbased programeverything from lead paint screening for Immigrant children to migrant health centers. veterans pensions. and nutrition programs for the elderly. The effect of these provisions is to bar legal immigrants from receiving virtually any meanstested Government assistance. This bar lasts at least 5 years. The practical effect of these deeming rules is almost the same as banning the benefit. We have seen what happens in deeming. The deeming effectively causes crashing reductions in all of these programs for those that might have otherwise been eligible. For future immigrants. deeming applies for the last 40 quarters of work. For immigrants who are already here. deeming applies until they have been here for 5 years. This means that every program must now set up a bureaucracy to carry out immigration checks on every citizen and noncitizen to see who is entitled to assistance. They have to find out if there Is a sponsor. Listen to this.