Immigration Reform and Food Stamps

Let’s Be Glad We Finally Have a Bill

We should all be happy that the US Senate has proposed a bill that offers a path to legal status and ultimately citizenship for most of the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are living and working in the United States. It’s great that we are finally going to deal with them in a realistic way. The bill is not perfect, but often the perfect is the enemy of the good.

Denying Food Stamps Would Be Counterproductive

One of the provisions of the immigration bill is, however, counterproductive. The bill specifies that during the 10-year period during which the immigrants will have the status of Registered Provisional Immigrants, they will be ineligible for Food Stamps or other forms of federal assistance. This is a very foolish provision.

Food Stamps Supplement Inadequate Wages

Our economy depends on the Food Stamps received by workers who earn low wages. Millions of people work in jobs that do not pay enough in wages to allow a person – much less a family – to live. They are able to live because their incomes are supplemented with food stamps. This situation is the result of forty years of declining wages and increasing inequality in our country. Many businesses now depend entirely on workers who could not live on their wages if they did not receive food stamps.  This situation is not going to change soon, and while it lasts, we need to be prepared to supplement people’s wages so that they can live, and Registered Provisional Immigrants are no exception.

Denying Food Stamps to Immigrants Will Lead to More Crime

To deny food stamps to Registered Provisional Immigrants will make them poorer. It will be harder for them or their children to succeed in our society. Fewer will go on to advanced education. More of them will turn to crime because it is better than hunger. More crime will mean a need for more prisons and more law enforcement. Food stamps are cheap compared to prisons or law enforcement. So, we would probably save money by allowing Registered Provisional Immigrants to receive food stamps.

Some people will say, “Yes, but people who are here illegally should not be rewarded. They are law-breakers and should be punished.” Perhaps so, but that does not mean that we should cut off our nose to spite our face. We should not harm ourselves merely to give us the satisfaction of sticking it to the immigrants. It would be very stupid of us to spend our limited resources on more prisons and more crime merely to avoid giving food stamps to Registered Provisional Immigrants.

Food Stamps Create Jobs and Profits in Our Community

There is still another way that denying food stamps to Registered Provisional Immigrants would be cutting off our nose to spite our face.  The federal money behind those stamps is money that would come into our community. It would bring profits to grocery stores and wages to the workers in those stores. They in turn would spend the money on food; clothing, shelter and entertainment in our community. That spending would create profits and jobs. By refusing to allow Registered Provisional Immigrants to receive food stamps, we would again be hurting ourselves.

This is a time when we need jobs, and we need business confidence.  If our economy is to grow and thereby to provide better lives for all of us and a reduction in the federal deficit, this is not a time to be stingy with food stamps.