New Study Finds 57% of Immigrant Households with Children Use Welfare

New Study Finds 57% of Immigrant Households with Children Use Welfare

Tuesday, April 5, 2011, 11:05 AM EDT – posted on NumbersUSA

A new study from the Center of Immigration Studies shows that 57% of households headed by an immigrant with children under the age of 18 receive some form of welfare. Only 39% of native born households with children receive welfare services. The study included households headed by both illegal and legal immigrants.

The research conducted by Steven Camorata, the Center’s Director of Research, found that immigrant households tend to use food assistance and medicaid programs at a much higher rate than native born American households. He found that the use of cash and housing programs were about the same between the two groups.

Furthermore, the research found that a large share of the immigrant households using welfare is received on behalf of U.S.-born children. But 56% of the entirely immigrant households still use some from of welfare.

Among other findings:

• Households with children with the highest rates of welfare use are those headed by immigrants from the Dominican Republic (82 percent), and Mexico and Guatemala (75 percent). Those with the lowest use rates are from the United Kingdom (7 percent), India (19 percent), Canada (23 percent), and Korea (25 percent).
• The states where immigrant households with children have the highest welfare use rates are Arizona (62 percent); Texas, California, and New York (61 percent); Pennsylvania (59 percent); Minnesota, and Oregon (56 percent); and Colorado (55 percent).
• The Center estimates that 52 percent of households with children headed by legal immigrants used at least one welfare program in 2009, compared to 71 percent for illegal immigrant households with children. Illegal immigrants generally receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born children.
• Illegal immigrant households with children primarily use only food assistance and Medicaid, making almost no use of cash or housing assistance. In contrast, legal immigrant households tend to have relatively high use rates for every type of program.
• High welfare use by immigrant households with children is partly explained by the low education level of many immigrants. Of households headed by an immigrant who has not graduated high school, 80 percent access the welfare system, compared to 25 percent for those headed by an immigrant who has at least a bachelor’s degree.
• The vast majority (95 percent) of immigrant households with children had at least one worker in 2009. But their low education levels and resulting low incomes mean that more than half of these working immigrant households with children still accessed the welfare system during 2009.
• Excluding refugees, 57 percent of immigrant households with children access welfare.
• For all households (those with and without children), the use rates were 37 percent for households headed by immigrants and 22 percent for those headed by natives.
• Most new legal immigrants are barred from using some welfare for the first five years. But this provision has only a modest impact on household use rates because most immigrants have been in the country longer than five years; the ban applies only to some programs; some states provide welfare to new immigrants on their own; by naturalizing, immigrants become eligible for all programs; and most important, the U.S.-born children of immigrants (including those of illegal immigrants) are American citizens, and are eligible for all programs at birth.

For more information, see the Center for Immigration Studies.