Aid Urged For Legal Immigrants Groups Ask Feds To Reinstate Eligibility For Food Stamps

On the eve of the first anniversary of federal welfare reform, several community groups called on Congress and the Clinton administration to reinstate eligibility for food stamps to legal immigrants.

Thursday’s action came at a press conference called by Latino, Asian American and social service groups who said nearly 1 million legal immigrants around the country would be placed in dire straits by the welfare legislation, whose provisions on food stamps take effect today.

“Many of these immigrants are working men and women who supplement their income with food stamps in order to provide food for their families,” said Cecilia Munoz, executive director of the National Council of La Raza.

Munoz, noting that Congress and the president recently reversed the welfare bill’s elimination of Supplemental Security Income for many legal immigrants, said food stamps should be restored, too.

“It was unfair to deny SSI to immigrants and apply this change in the law retroactively. It equally unfair to do the same with food stamps,” she said.

Several states have decided to pick up the cost of food stamps for some legal immigrants. A compromise worked out in California will grant eligibility to legal immigrants who are under age 18 or over 64.

Karen Narasaki, head of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, called the California compromise “bankrupt.”

Children “live in a family. So are you asking the children to watch their parents starve?” she said. “No, it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. … I think California can do better.”

But Corinne Chee, a spokeswoman with the state Department of Social Services, said many of California’s legal immigrants who now receive food stamps will either continue to do so after today or will regain eligibility in the next several months.