Luis. met with SSi officials last week at a special office In Wheaton Plaza. "We want to know what we can do." said Luis Medina. The Medinas are not alone. Under the Welfare Reform Act signed by President Clinton last year. most legal Immigrants are no longer eligible for SS1. Approximately 4.000 Montgomery County immigrant residents receive SSI checks each month. and they. too. will be getting notification letters soon. About 400 letters are going out each week. and recipients have 90 days to respond and have their eligibility reevaluated. To meet the anticipated response. officials at the Wheaton Social Security office have leased a former Crostar Bank facility at Wheaton Plaza and staffed it with five new workers to evaluate cases like Medinas. Rich Fenton. manager of the Wheaton office. said the temporary site currently handles about 25 to 30 people per day. But he expoes visits from as many as 50 to 60 people each day as more residents are notified. "Im expecting that the volume will increase pretty substantially." Fenton said. SSA spokesman Tom Margenau said out of 6.5 million SSI recipients nationwide. approximately 900.000 are legal Immigrants. Benefit checks will stop flowing to an estimated 500.000 of those. according to federal officials. resulting in government savings of 9.9 billion through 20Ml. The government also will save money by cracking down on SSI fraud. officials said. SSAs Office of the Inspector General closed &3 fraud cases in fiscal 1006. spokesman Dan Devin said. States also may save money when immigrants lose their SSI benefits. As noncitizen residents are removed from SBI. Margenau said most also will lose Medicaid benefits. which come from a state program adminis. tered through the county Department of Health and Human Services. Local officials are unsure how many people may be dropped. "We dont have a good sense yet of what the numbers are." saIld Corinne Stevens. chief of Montgomery Countys Crisis.
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noncitizen immigrant immigrants Immigrants