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Immigrants’ access to public benefits and
work supports raises difficult challenges that bear on federalism, equity,
budget, and integration issues. While legal immigrants had
historically been eligible for benefits on the same terms as citizens,
these rules changed with the 1996 Welfare Reform law.
The 1996 Welfare Reform law changed the landscape and represented
a major departure in welfare and integration policy in the United
States. Prior to the law’s enactment, legal immigrants were
eligible for public benefits on more or less the same terms as citizens.
Following the law’s enactment and subsequent amendment, most
legal immigrants arriving after 1996 are barred for at least five
years from the core federal safety net programs: Food Stamps, Medicaid
and the State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), Temporary Assistance
to Needy Families Program (TANF), and the Supplemental Security Income
Program (SSI).
While reforms to the 1996 law have basically restored benefits to
legal permanent residents in the United States before 1996, over 40 percent of immigrants with green cards arrived after that date.
Some states have replaced federal health and other benefits by subsidizing
service programs with their own funds. These subsidies, although
voluntarily borne, can be seen as a form of federal cost shift. |
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Recent MPI Analyses |
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Immigration Reform: A Long Road to Citizenship and Insurance Coverage
In an article in the April issue of Health Affairs, Migration Policy Institute Senior Policy Analyst Randy Capps and Senior Vice President Michael Fix examine the key questions surrounding legalization and the Affordable Care Act (ACA). With Congress poised to consider a major overhaul of US immigration laws and legalization for many of the nation’s unauthorized immigrants, how legalization affects implementation of the ACA is a key policy question. The article examines current coverage rates for unauthorized immigrants, eligibility for coverage under expansion of Medicaid, the distribution of costs of uncompensated care, and options for covering those who will remain uninsured under ACA.
Read the Article
Immigrants and Health Care Reform: What’s Really at Stake?
By Randy Capps, Marc R. Rosenblum, and Michael Fix
Health care reform proposals under consideration in Congress that would exclude many legal immigrants from core benefits and impose new verification requirements would have important spillover consequences for taxpayers and other health care consumers. In a new report, MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy offers the first-ever estimates of the size of uninsured immigrant populations in major immigrant-destination states, the number of immigrant workers covered by employer-provided plans, and the share of immigrants employed by small firms likely to be exempted from employer coverage mandates. The report, based on MPI analysis of Census Bureau data, also examines health coverage for immigrants by legal status, age, and poverty levels.
Download Report | Press Release
Federal Spending on Immigrant Families' Integration
By Julia Gelatt and Michael Fix
Securing the Future: US Immigrant Integration Policy, A Reader
February 2007
Access to Health Care and Health Insurance: Immigrants
and Immigration Reform
By Leighton Ku and Demetrios G. Papademetriou
Securing the Future: US Immigrant Integration Policy, A Reader
February 2007
Access to Health Care after Immigration Reform: Lessons from New York
By Adam Gurvitch
Securing the Future: US Immigrant Integration Policy, A Reader
February 2007
Immigrants'
Costs and Contributions: The Effects of
Reform
Michael Fix's Testimony before the US House of Representatives Committee on Ways
and Means, July 26, 2006
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Did you know? |
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The use of TANF, SSI and Food Stamps by low-income
legal immigrant families with children was lower than that of
their native counterparts both before and after welfare reform.
Low-income, legal, non-citizen children are twice as likely
to be uninsured as their native counterparts.
A recent Massachusetts experiment involving intensive outreach
boosted insurance coverage rates for Latino and immigrant children
from 57 to 96 percent. |
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What’s Happening |
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The president released his fiscal year 2008
annual budget on February 5, 2007. The budget request will
shape Congressional appropriations for the range of public
benefits and work supports provided to immigrant families including
food stamps, Medicaid, SCHIP, refugee resettlement, migrant
head start, and migrant health, among others. To view the president’s
FY 2008 budget, click
here.
The Immigrant Child Health Improvement Act is expected to
be reintroduced in Congress this year. The Act, last introduced
in 2005, would allow states to use federal funds to provide
Medicaid to legally present pregnant women and their children
regardless of when they entered the United States. |
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Selected Readings
(List Under Development) |
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“Food Insecurity and Public Assistance”
By George Borjas
Journal of Public Economics 88, 2004, 1421-1143
Welfare Reform’s Chilling Effects on Noncitizens: Changes in Noncitizen Welfare Recipiency of Shifts Citizenship Status?
By Jennifer Van Hook
Social Science Quarterly 84, No. 3 (2003): 613-631
The Scope and Impact of Welfare Reform’s Immigrant
Provisions
By Michael Fix and Jeffrey S. Passel
Urban Institute, 2002
“Patchwork Policies: State Assistance for Immigrants
Under Welfare Reform”
By Wendy Zimmermann and Karen C. Tumlin
Assessing the New Federalism Occasional Paper No. 24, Urban Institute,
1999 |
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