Edition: U.S. / Global

Stop Benefits for Aliens? It Wouldn't Be That Easy

Published: June 8, 1994

On a sultry day in July, a 25-year-old woman, Laura C., waded across the Rio Grande, slipped past the Border Patrol in Brownsville, Tex., and boarded a $49 Southwest Airlines flight to Houston.

Hoping for work and a better life, she has instead subsisted on government benefits and become one more straw threatening to break the back of America's uneasy patience with illegal immigrants.

With at least four million illegal aliens in the country, politicians from Florida to California have introduced dozens of bills to stop giving them services like education to health care.

Laura C., the unmarried mother of two children with a third on the way when she arrived, reached Houston with no English and no plan beyond her sister's assurance that she could find house-cleaning jobs at $40 a day.

"I had never heard of food stamps; I had never heard of W.I.C.," Laura said, naming the two Federal programs that put $46.50 worth of food on her family's table each week. (She did not want her last name used for fear of being found and deported.)

Most of the benefits are available because Laura's baby boy, Jacobo, born at public expense at Ben Taub General Hospital here five months ago, is an American citizen.

Illegal immigrants are not always a drain on the American economy. Many pay more in direct and indirect taxes than they get in government services. But Laura and her children epitomize the immigrants who angry taxpayers say come here in violation of American law and live off the American safety net.

Nevertheless, it would be extremely difficult, and perhaps even legally impossible, to reduce aid to illegal immigrants significantly. Public schools would have to turn away children, and hospitals would have to refuse treatment to accident victims and pregnant women. Education and emergency medical care represent at least two-thirds of the estimated $7 billion spent each year by all levels of government on illegal immigrants, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, a research group in Washington.

But longstanding Federal and state laws and court rulings require hospitals to provide emergency care for anyone, regardless of immigration status, and the Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that any child on American soil has the right to an education.

Barring catastrophic illness, by far the single largest cost that Laura's family will pose to taxpayers is the education of her three children: Jesus, 5 years old, who registered for kindergarten last week; Nicole, who turns 3 in a few days, and Jacobo.

The Federal, state and local governments pay an average of $4,683 a year for a student in Houston. If Laura's three children go through high school, the bill would come to more than $182,000 in today's dollars.

Nationwide, the cost of educating illegal immigrants is estimated to be at least $3 billion a year -- and $4.5 billion when the American-born children of illegal immigrants are included.

As for health care, many proposals to cut aid would do little more than transfer to local governments the obligations that have been assumed by Federal programs, like Medicaid, which helped to pay for Jacobo's delivery in January.

Welfare, by contrast, is largely unavailable to illegal immigrants, a vast majority of whom work and pay some taxes. Only a small minority receive benefits, generally through relatives who are American citizens.

Laura does not qualify for Aid for Families With Dependent Children, the welfare program that provides cash to recipients. But for now, she and her daughter, Nicole, qualify for $12 a week in food coupons from the Women, Infants and Children program, a supplemental Federal benefit for nursing mothers, who are eligible regardless of citizenship, and for children under 5. Jacobo qualifies for another $8 a week under this program.

Any long-term benefits are likely to come through Jacobo, whose rights to welfare are the same as those of any native-born American.

Politicians who favor deep reductions in all types of aid to illegal immigrants hope to change the rules. Some, like Gov. Pete Wilson of California, have called for a constitutional amendment to take away citizenship rights from the American-born children of illegal aliens. A California ballot initiative would bar illegal immigrants from schools. If approved, the measure is certain to face legal challenges.

There has generally been less pressure for such aggressive action in other parts of the country -- even in places like New York and Texas, which both have large populations of illegal immigrants.

Proponents of the changes say they would discourage people like Laura C. from entering the country. But many experts, and immigrants themselves, say curtailed services would not deter people, because their primary goal is to find a job.

"For those who have come to work -- and believe me, that is most -- it won't matter if you cut the benefits," Laura said. "There may be problems when they come here, they may find work or they may not. Maybe the work will not pay as much as they thought. But they'll come anyway."

Supporters of a crackdown counter that even if the cutoff fails to stem the tide, it is outrageous for taxpayers to bear any burden for those who have entered the country illegally.