Medicare Recipients by Legal Status |
That's one of the reasons that they're less likely to receive welfare benefits than the U.S. born. However, some states permit immigrants to access certain state benefits. Given that most immigrants do not have access to federal welfare programs, they are actually more likely than natives to participate in state funded programs. [8][9]
Of these groups of immigrants who can actually receive welfare benefits, very few actually do. In fact, less immigrants use welfare programs than native-born Americans. [10] There are 82.6 million U.S. residents receiving one or more of the four main public benefits (SNAP, TANF, SSI, and Medicaid/CHIP). Of these residents, 70,669,200 (86%) are U.S. born citizens, 6,840,500 (8%) are not citizens, and 5,098,200 (6%) are naturalized citizens. [11] |
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Although the number of individual immigrants receiving welfare is relatively low, immigrant households can still receive benefits through citizen spouses and children. But it’s important to point out that in this study, an immigrant household is any household with a member who is an immigrant.
The reality is there are more non-citizens living in families receiving public benefits than there are actual non-citizens receiving benefits. [20] That’s why measuring benefit use by “immigrant household” can be misleading. It ignores the probability that the people receiving the benefits are likely to be U.S. born citizens—usually spouses or children of immigrants. But it’s not limited to just spouses and children. A household can include unmarried partners, grandparents, siblings, parents-in-law, siblings-in-law, children-in-law, roommates, boarders, and foster children. [21] As a result, an immigrant head of household could be taking the blame for anyone’s use of welfare benefits, even if they’re not really a part of their family. It’s especially unfair because, as we’ve already discussed, although some immigrants can receive public benefits, most can’t and don’t. |