Local Immigrant Families Face Potential Hunger
By Kelly Field
WASHINGTON, April 26–Mary Nguyen is worried. The State Supplemental Food Stamp Program is out of money, and she knows she could lose her benefit any day. If the legislature doesn’t come up with $1.2 million to fund the program through the end of June, she and 8,000 other poor Massachusetts immigrants will soon be forced to find other ways to feed their families.
“If the food stamps are cut, I will not be able to buy enough food for my family,” said Nguyen, a mother of two and the plaintiff in a law suit challenging the state’s plan to stop issuing food stamps on May 7. A judge has granted a preliminary injunction in the case, but Deborah Harris, Nguyen’s lawyer at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, said the hold will probably be only a “temporary reprieve.”
Currently, 450 Lawrence immigrants receive an average of $90 a month in food stamps through the State Supplemental Food Stamp Program (SSFSP). If the state does not come up with additional funding for the program, they could lose their benefit through July 1, the start of the next fiscal year.
At local food pantries and soup kitchens, employees are preparing for the worst.
“We expect an increase in the number of people coming here,” said Rejeanne Keeley, executive director of Neighbors in Need, which operates seven food pantries in Lawrence and one in Haverhill. “(The imminent cut) is almost draining the life out of people.”
The scheduled cut comes at a time when the food stamp caseload is the highest it’s been since 1998. Since November, the program has grown from 6,377 cases to 8,137 cases, an increase of 28 percent, according to Dick Powers, spokesman for the state Department of Transitional Assistance. Powers blamed the economy and rising unemployment for the increase.
Meanwhile, food pantry use is already higher than normal in the Merrimac Valley. Last year, Massachusetts food pantries served 16 percent more children each month than in 2000, according to a Project Bread survey of 18 food pantries. Advocates worry that eliminating the state’s food stamp benefit could put an even greater strain on these private organizations.
“People are saying: ‘What am I going to do, how am I going to feed my children if anything is cut back?’ ” said Sister Mary Ellen Broderick of the Good Shepherd Center Soup Kitchen at Lawrence’s Lazarus House emergency shelter.
Passing the Buck
When Congress reformed the welfare system in 1996, it removed virtually all immigrants from the federal food stamp rolls. Though it subsequently restored the benefit to roughly a third of non-citizens, this eligibility cut resulted in a huge cost shift to states like Massachusetts, which opted to continue the benefit using state money. Since 1998, Massachusetts has appropriated more than $40 million to the SSFSP to cover benefits for non-citizens. This year, it appropriated $8.2 million, $1.2 million less than proved necessary this year because of the recession and the post-Sept. 11 economic downturn.
“They (the federal government) left states holding the bag,” said Sheri Steisel, director of the Human Services Committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures. “Now, 45 states and DC are facing budget gaps and can no longer afford to make up the difference.”
But states may not have to bear the cost of providing food stamps to immigrants for much longer. President Bush has proposed providing food stamps to legal immigrants who have been in the United States for five years, and Congress is now working out a House-Senate compromise on the issue.
If Congress votes to restore food stamps to immigrants, Massachusetts could save more than $9 million next year. If it doesn’t, advocates fear, the SSFSP could face underfunding again next year.
“Massachusetts is facing a fiscal crisis, so it is really important for the federal government to bear the responsibility for federal benefits,” said Reshma Shamasunder, director of benefits policy and government affairs for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Coalition.
Under-enrollment Still a Problem
Even with the recent increases, current immigrant food stamp caseloads are much smaller than they were in the early to mid-1990s, before welfare reform. In 1998, the year Massachusetts took over the federal immigrant caseload, 9,358 people were on the rolls. By 2001, there were 5,549.
In Lawrence, participation in the SSFSP fell from 700 to 450 cases from 1998 to 2001, according to the DTA.
The federal program has also seen a dramatic decline, particularly among the citizen children of immigrant parents. From 1994 to 1999, the number of citizen children of non-citizen parents participating nationally in the food stamp program declined by 42 percent, according to an Agriculture Department report to Congress.
“It appears that parents who themselves are not eligible may make less of an effort to enroll their children,” said Paula Fromby, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University and co-author of a study that examined welfare participation rates among poor people in Boston, Chicago and San Antonio.
Fromby’s “Three City Study” found that over a two-year period, 51 percent of mostly Dominican households in Boston with citizen caregivers received food stamps, while only 37 percent of households with non-citizen caregivers received them.
While the immigrant caseload is now rising, experts caution that the numbers do not necessarily translate into increased enrollment rates. Ellen Parker, executive director of Project Bread, said that it is possible that while the “absolute numbers” of participants grew with the recession, the percentage of participating immigrants remained the same.
“I’m not sure if (the growth) means that we have an increase in our success rate,” she said. “It may just mean that the (eligible) population is getting bigger.”
What Accounts for Under-enrollment?
According to surveys of immigrants, the No. 1 reason immigrants don’t participate in food stamp programs is that they don’t think they’re eligible.
“There is an enormous amount of confusion as to what immigrants are and aren’t eligible to receive,” said Marcela Urrutia, policy analyst for the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s largest Latino advocacy organization.
Jorge Santiago, who has studied Lawrence-area Latina former welfare recipients at the Institute for Community and Workforce Development at Northern Essex Community College, said that “at the time welfare reform was being implemented,” there was “a lot of confusion among even the case managers about who was eligible.” In some cases, he said, local field offices deliberately withheld information about available benefits to save money.
“The vast majority of Latinas (in my study) weren’t even told” that they remained eligible for food stamps after leaving welfare, he said.
Some immigrants also believe they would jeopardize their chances of achieving citizenship by accepting food stamps. In reality, the Immigration and Naturalization Service can consider cash assistance, but not non-cash assistance like food stamps, in determining whether an applicant is a “public charge,” and thus, legally, a “burden” to the country.
“When welfare reform passed, people got scared and stepped away,” said Catherine D’Amato, CEO and president of the Greater Boston Food Bank. “They went from government support to private support.”
Onerous application processes also discourage enrollment. In Massachusetts, the process begins with an eight-page form and can require up to 20 forms of documentation, according to Project Bread. Eric Bost, Agriculture undersecretary for food nutrition and consumer services, acknowledged in testimony before Congress last June that “the complexity of program requirementsámay deter participation among people eligible for benefits.”
Meanwhile, some immigrants say they feel degraded and demeaned by the welfare office experience.
“We treat people with respect, and we sometimes hear that they don’t get that same treatment from the welfare office,” said Frank Cortez, director of Merrimac Valley Catholic Charities Food Programs, which runs food pantries in Lowell and Haverhill.
The effects of declining food stamp participation can be seen in food pantry use over the last five years. Since 1997, there has been a 13.5 percent increase in the number of individuals seeking assistance from the feeding programs served by the Greater Boston Food Bank, according to communications manager Janet Zipes. The Food Bank now serves 58,301 individuals weekly, roughly equivalent to the population of Haverhill.
In Lawrence, Cortez said, his pantries have experienced a 25 percent increase in use each year since the 1996 welfare reform legislation became law. Keeley of Neighbors in Need said she has seen an increase in the number of “working poor,” people making a living but still not making it.
And at Bread and Roses, a soup kitchen in Lawrence, executive director Linda Monroe said, “Most of the people we provide services to are working at a minimum wage.”
Susan Hofer, Second Harvest’s spokeswoman, said that the umbrella hunger relief organization now provides service to 23 million Americans, 6 million more than receive food stamps.
“We’re now providing more assistance than the food stamp program is, and that’s a problem,” Hofer said.
Published in The Eagle-Tribune, in Lawrence, Mass.
