by: Miranda West
Yielding to political pressure, President Clinton recently signed a bill that will attempt to overhaul the welfare system and subsequently save $55 billion in Federal spending over the next six years. This welfare overhaul bill is designed to radically alter the welfare system as it is known to many. The decision to sign such a bill would seem an appropriate political move during the reelection period to aid in the much sought after balanced budget as well as to appease welfare opponents. Yet, as the Republican-controlled Congress celebrates, many Democrats are calling Bill Clinton a traitor to the party.
The way the new bill will work is to relieve the Federal government of welfare implementation by giving states the burden and expense of administering many of the welfare programs. The federal government will assist by allocating block grants to the state's to use in aiding the poor. Many states, unfortunately, are not prepared to assume the immense burden of directing welfare policies.
The signing of the bill is a reversal of policies established during Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. With the bill, the government has rejected the decade old promise of guaranteed help to the nation's poor. Among the specifics of the bill is the denial of Food Stamps and Supplemental Security Insurance to most, if not all, legal immigrants.
Republican Governor George W. Bush of Texas agrees with the difficulty in carrying out this new policy and is opposed to cutting off legal immigrants from government aid. Because this new welfare legislation directly targets legal immigrants, Texas will be one of the hardest hit states. Legal immigrants, or residents of the United States who do not posses citizenship, have been the target of many xenophobic forces in the country. The bill seems to be a concession to the anti-immigrant groups who incorrectly blame immigrants for the draining of federal funds. By next summer, when the new bill goes into full effect, more than 32,000 legal immigrants stand to lose the Food Stamps benefits they depend on to survive. Many of these immigrants have lived in the United States for years and are not citizens for the simple reason that they cannot afford to pay the application fees. For these tax-paying citizens, the new bill will make it even more difficult for their struggling families to make ends meet.
The bill will also bar future legal immigrants from most welfare assistance. For these people, the new bill will make beginning a new life in America even tougher. In order to obtain a job in the United States it is necessary for legal immigrants to possess the necessary paperwork, including working papers and a social security number. The process for obtaining these could take up to three months. Without a job and without any sort of government assistance, these people will be unable to provide shelter or food for themselves or their families.
The border area of the Rio Grande Valley in Southern Texas would be the hardest hit area in the nation by the new bill. In the Valley, one in every seven people is a legal immigrant and more than 42 percent of the people live below the poverty level. One of the poorest areas in the country, the welfare bill threatens irreparable harm to the 187,000 immigrants in the Valley who receive Food Stamps and depend on them for survival. In addition to the immigrants that stand to lose Food Stamps, 22,000, according to preliminary estimates, will be cut from welfare, and all 53,160 elderly and disabled immigrants that currently receive Supplemental Security Income will be cut off.
President Clinton announced at that signing that the signing of the bill was "a historic chance to make welfare what it was meant to be: a second chance, not a way of life." The implications of such a statement are that the bill will give welfare recipients that necessary "push" to find a job and to eventually become self-supporting. There is little chance, though, of the bill actually achieving the intended effect in the Valley where the unemployment rate is 18.6 percent. This number is more than three times the state and national averages. In an area where jobs simply do not exist, no amount of welfare cuts will assist in decreasing unemployment.
The new law has also left many of the Valley's residents full of confusion. States have been granted by the new law up to one year to carry out a complicated process of "recertification" of legal immigrants to determine if there are extenuating circumstances involved in each individual case that may allow immigrants to continue receiving benefits. Probably the most confusing factors in the bill is in its definition of work. According to the new law, if 25 percent of the state's welfare recipients are not "working," the block grant the state receives will be cut by 5 percent. Each year the grant can be reduced if more people are not "working." Yet how the bill counts training, education, and job hunting as work are questions that remain unanswered. With state administrators still unsure of the specifics, those with questions have little choice but to simply wait and see what the government decides.
Tucked within the bill are also provisions that encourage state promotion of abstinence and marriage. For example, one provision states that the Government will pay annual bonuses to the five states that have the largest reductions in illegitimate births from 1999 to 2000. Another provision is the allocation of $400 million for the purpose of teaching abstinence as a form of birth control, yet no other type of birth control method would warrant the funds.
Residents of the Rio Grande Valley await the fate of a majority of the population. While Bill Clinton uses legal immigrants and the welfare system as reelection pawns, legal immigrants are caught in the cross-fire of Democrat and Republican politicking. By adding fuel to the xenophobic fire, President Clinton has further factionalized the Democratic Party and the entire United States.