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Brideshead
Revisited, the Protestant suitor of a Catholic girl undergoes
instruction to convert to Catholicism, but is so gullible that he
believes the girl's mischievous little sister when she tells him
to ask his instructor about the "Sacred Monkeys of the Vatican."
It sometimes
seems that this White House would happily embrace the Sacred Monkeys
of the Vatican if someone told them it would help win Hispanic votes.
From the multicultural show at the 2000 nominating convention to
the unblinking support for amnesty for millions of illegal aliens
(even after September 11), there is no measure too far-fetched for
this administration to swallow in its frenetic pursuit of Hispanic
votes.
Along these
lines, President Bush recently announced that he wants to restore
eligibility for food stamps to legal immigrants who have not yet
become citizens. Cutting many legal immigrants off from public benefits,
including food stamps, was part of the 1996 welfare-reform law,
and accounted for close to half of the law's projected savings.
But even after
the 1996 reforms, during an unusually strong expansion, figures
from 2000 (before the current recession started) show that immigrants
were still more likely to use welfare than native-born Americans.
Looking just at food stamps, about 5 percent of households headed
by a native-born person used the program, while about 7 percent
of immigrant-headed households did. Even households headed by immigrants
who arrived more than 20 years ago used food stamps at a higher
rate than natives.
And the picture
is even worse when it comes to immigrants' country of origin; though
Asian immigrants generally have lower welfare-use rates, the top
five Latin-American groups (Mexicans, Salvadorans, Dominicans, Cubans,
and Colombians), which account for more than one-third of all immigrants,
all are more likely to use food stamps than natives. Mexicans, the
main target of the administration's immigrant focus, use food stamps
at nearly twice the rate of native-born Americans and collect an
average welfare payment that is 20 percent higher than those recipients.
The Hispanic
who will vote Republican because of expanded welfare programs for
immigrants is this administration's Sacred Monkey of the Vatican,
a fantasy sold them by Hispanic consultants and leftist activists.
The Democrats will always outbid the GOP, as we saw last year with
amnesty for illegal aliens, which the White House wants to limit
to Mexicans and Democrats offer to everyone.
But, putting
aside the White House's political gullibility, we still need to
decide what to do about heavy welfare use by immigrants.
Unlike Saudi
Arabia, the United States has always admitted foreign residents
with the expectation that they would eventually become Americans,
equal members in a republic of citizens rather than a helot class
imported to serve the needs of native-born citizens. Given this
model, it is perfectly appropriate to extend welfare eligibility
to long-term legal immigrants who lack sponsors or whose sponsors
are unable to fulfill their obligations. In this sense, the administration's
pro-immigrant impulses are leading them in the right direction.
The problem
arises when such a generous approach to immigrant policy
(how we treat foreigners already living among us) is combined with
an immigration policy that annually admits from abroad hundreds
of thousands of people with little education who have great difficulty
succeeding in the modern American economy. This combination —
a pro-immigrant policy of mass immigration — is importing a
vast new impoverished class, a development the effects of which
will be felt for generations to come.
During the
1990s, the growth in immigrant-related poverty overwhelmingly accounted
for the general increase in poverty in that decade, offsetting the
reduction in the poor population from means-tested welfare payments.
Nor is this
merely a matter of poor newcomers just getting started on upward
mobility. Census data show that established immigrants (those who'd
lived here between 10 and 20 years before the survey) have been
getting progressively poorer since mass immigration was restarted
in the 1960s.
Welfare reformers
addressed this problem through immigrant-policy changes in 1996.
The libertarian cry of "immigration si, welfare no" inspired
Congress to preserve mass immigration but cut some immigrants off
welfare. Despite subsequent rollbacks of the welfare ban, some utopians
still cling to this formulation; Rep. Ron Paul, for instance, wrote
in a recent newsletter that "meaningful immigration reform
can only take place when we end the welfare state." Maybe this
is possible in some alternate universe, but in the real world the
welfare state is a permanent feature of modern society, however
much it might be reformed and tightened up. And admitting poor people
from abroad inevitably means they will make heavy use of whatever
welfare programs we maintain.
In short, the
problem of immigrants on welfare is not a problem of immigrant policy
but of immigration policy, and can only be solved by reducing the
number of low-skilled immigrants admitted to the United States.
The White House proposal to restore food-stamp eligibility to legal
immigrants only makes sense if it is coupled with significant, permanent
cuts in new legal immigration — a pro-immigrant policy of low
immigration. Otherwise, the proposal is just another step along
the road to a poorer, more divided America governed by the Democratic
party.
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