How Are Immigrants Faring After Welfare Reform?
Preliminary Evidence from Los Angeles and New York City

Part I:
A Profile of the Los Angeles and New York Immigrant Population Following Welfare Reform

[ Main Page of Report | Contents of Report ]

Contents

• Policy Background
• Survey Methods
• Type and Number of Immigrants
• Citizenship and Immigration Categories Used in This Report
• Use of Public Benefit Programs
• Food Stamp Benefits
• Immigrants' Understanding about Program Eligibility
• Income and Employment
• Food Insecurity and Housing Need
• Health Status and Insurance Coverage
• Conclusions

Endnotes

During the 1990s, federal and state policy officials were engaged in public policy debates about both welfare and public assistance for low-income people and immigration and the role of immigrants in American society. In 1996, these debates intersected, resulting in the passage of two laws that significantly limited the extent to which legally admitted immigrants could participate in means-tested benefit programs, including the Food Stamp Program (FSP), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Medicaid, and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

Before 1996, immigrants who were lawfully admitted to the United States as permanent residents were generally eligible for benefit programs on terms similar to those of citizens. The new laws prohibited many legal immigrants from receiving federal means-tested benefits, even if they were very poor. An underlying philosophy of the new policies was that immigrants, particularly newly arrived ones, should not depend on the government for assistance and should rely instead on their own efforts and on their sponsors, who helped bring them into the country. Yet some worried that the policies might harm an already vulnerable segment of society.

Since the passage of welfare reform in 1996, how have low-income immigrants fared? This report is part of a broader research project that seeks to provide timely information about the economic and health status of immigrants, particularly in the context of the welfare reform policy changes. This report analyzes data from the new Los Angeles-New York City Immigrant Survey (LANYCIS), a study of over 3,400 immigrant families, that is, families with foreign-born adults. It provides a preliminary overview of the status of low-income immigrant families in these two urban areas. Other parts of the project include case study reports about the status of immigrants and the institutions that provide them with health and human services, analyses of existing data sources, and follow-up in-person interviews with a subsample of 200 families (Zimmermann and Fix 1998; Fix and Passel 1999; Ku and Freilich 2001).

We focused on Los Angeles County and New York City — the two urban areas with the most immigrants, serving as home to almost 6 million foreign-born persons, roughly one-fifth of the nation's immigrants (who totaled about 30 million in Census 2000).⁽²⁾ While the experiences of these two cities cannot be generalized to the whole country, these two key immigrant areas in the United States are communities with diverse immigrant populations and political environments.⁽³⁾ For example, while immigrants in Los Angeles are principally Mexican, Central American, or Asian, the foreign-born population of New York City is quite global and includes Dominicans, other Caribbean immigrants, and Russians, as well as a large number of Mexican and Asian immigrants. Furthermore, the two areas had different policy environments for immigrants. While the political attitudes toward immigrants in California moderated somewhat since the passage of Proposition 187 in 1994, immigration — particularly illegal immigration — remains a visible and often tense policy issue in Los Angeles, while the issue is less divisive in New York City, the nation's "melting pot." Nonetheless, California has enacted more inclusive social safety net programs for immigrants, particularly support for those arriving after August 22, 1996, than has New York State (Zimmermann and Tumlin 1999).

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Policy Background

The two laws that reshaped immigrant eligibility for federal public benefits were the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA, the federal welfare reform law) and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), both enacted in 1996. Since they were passed, incremental amendments to the legislation have restored benefits to limited groups of immigrants, particularly those who were already in the United States on or before August 22, 1996, when PRWORA was enacted.⁽⁴⁾

The current immigrant eligibility rules are very complex, and we summarize only the key elements here. For the sake of brevity, we use the term "post-enactment"to refer to immigrants who were legally admitted to the country on or after August 22, 1996, and "pre-enactment" to refer to those who arrived before that date.

• Food Stamp Program. This program provides food coupons (or electronic debit cards for food purchases) to help low-income families buy food in grocery stores. Most legal immigrants cannot receive food stamps, except for pre-enactment children and certain elderly or disabled persons. Legal immigrant adults who are not elderly or disabled must prove they have worked at least 10 years in the United States. A number of immigrant families that were receiving food stamps prior to welfare reform lost these benefits or had them reduced.
• Supplemental Security Income. This program provides cash assistance to low-income elderly or disabled people to help with basic living expenses. Post-enactment immigrants are ineligible. Pre-enactment immigrants can get benefits if they were already participating in SSI or if they were in the United States in August 1996 and subsequently became disabled.
• Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). This program is the state block grant that, under PRWORA, replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. States have great flexibility in how to use TANF funds to provide cash assistance and other benefits, such as child care and job training, to low-income families. It is the main federally-funded cash welfare program for these families. Post-enactment legal immigrants are ineligible for federally-funded TANF during their first five years in the country, and states have discretion to decide eligibility for pre-enactment legal immigrants. States may also provide welfare benefits to post-enactment legal immigrants, but only with their own funding. (In California, TANF is known as CalWorks.)
• Medicaid. This program provides health insurance for low-income children, families, disabled persons, and the elderly. Similar to TANF, post-enactment immigrants are ineligible for full Medicaid during first five years in the country, and states have discretion to decide eligibility for pre-enactment immigrants. Any immigrant who meets Medicaid eligibility requirements may get Medicaid coverage for emergency services, regardless of his or her immigration status or date of entry. These rules also apply to the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which was enacted in 1997. States also provide their own funding for public health insurance for immigrants not eligible for Medicaid or CHIP. (In California, Medicaid is called Medi-Cal and the main SCHIP program is called Healthy Families. New York State uses the program name "Medicaid", and the main SCHIP program is called Child Health Plus.)
• Citizenship and other exemptions. Immigrants are eligible for all benefits if they become naturalized citizens. There are also exemptions for immigrants who have served in the U.S. military and their dependents.
• Citizen children. Children who are native-born U.S. citizens are eligible for all of these programs, regardless of the citizenship and immigration status of their parents. Nationally, 78 percent of children of immigrants were U.S.-born citizens in 1999 (Capps 2001).
• Grace period for refugees and asylees. Unlike other legal immigrants, people admitted as refugees or asylees are eligible for federal means-tested benefits during their first several years in the country, regardless of their date of entry. For Medicaid, Food Stamps, and SSI, the refugee grace period is seven years; for TANF, it is five years. Certain groups of immigrants, such as Cuban-Haitian entrants and Amerasians, are categorically considered refugees, so they are also granted the grace periods.
• Undocumented aliens (illegal immigrants). Even before these laws were passed, undocumented aliens were not eligible for any of these programs, except for the receipt of Medicaid for emergency services. These rules remain in effect.
• State supplemental funding option. States may provide benefits to immigrants who are ineligible for federal assistance, provided that they opt to use only state funds, without matching federal assistance (although some of this state funding can count toward a state's "maintenance of effort" as required under rules regarding spending of TANF block grants). Many states have provided state-funded supplemental programs, particularly SCHIP, Medicaid, and food stamps. California provides state-funded supplemental programs that extend eligibility to most legal immigrants for benefits similar to food stamps, TANF, SSI, and Medicaid. The State of New York has more limited supplemental programs which are described in detail later in this report and elsewhere (Zimmermann and Tumlin 1999).
• Affidavit of support. As required by law, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) implemented a new Affidavit of Support in December 1997 that applies to all family and a few employment-based immigrants.⁽⁵⁾ Sponsors of immigrants applying on or after December 19, 1997 must sign a legally enforceable affidavit of support before their relatives can qualify to immigrate. Sponsors must have household incomes equal to or greater than 125 percent of the poverty level to qualify.⁽⁶⁾ Under the terms of the new affidavits, there are two additional considerations for sponsored immigrants:
  1. Deeming. Federal and state agencies administering means-tested programs should consider the income of sponsors in determining the immigrants' income eligibility. This could render most immigrants ineligible even after the five-year bar expires.
  2. Sponsor liability. Federal and state agencies administering benefit programs may also issue claims and sue sponsors to recoup the cost of benefits paid to or on behalf of immigrants they sponsored. Sponsors are liable until the immigrant naturalizes or has worked for 10 years in the United States.

Many of the restrictions on eligibility affect post-enactment immigrants. Therefore, the number of legal immigrants affected will grow as the years pass, as new immigrants continue to enter the United States. Because this survey was conducted in late 1999 and early 2000, it represents a relatively early view of the effects of the new immigrant-eligibility restrictions. In 2001, at the time this report was written, a larger number of immigrants were ineligible for federal benefit programs, and this number will increase further if there are no major changes in program eligibility rules.

While welfare reform legislation restricted federal eligibility rules for immigrants, other policy forces may also have affected immigrants' perceptions and opportunities. During much of the 1990s, there were widely reported public debates about the role of immigrants in the economy and society. In California, for example, the debate was particularly fierce; then-Governor Wilson's concern about illegal immigration was an important part of his policy agenda. In 1994, the state enacted the controversial Proposition 187, which sought to cut off state funding to services for undocumented immigrants, including public education and prenatal and other medical care.⁽⁷⁾

In addition, immigrant communities had fears, sometimes exaggerated, that receiving public benefits might lead to problems with the INS or other government agencies because of "public charge" issues. A longstanding element of U.S. immigration law is that, in determining whether to let an applicant become a legal permanent resident, the State Department and the INS may consider whether that person is likely to become a "public charge" — i.e., dependent on the state. Some well-publicized incidents fueled immigrants' longstanding fears of the INS with the result that some eligible legal immigrants avoided benefit programs due to concerns that benefits receipt might endanger their opportunities to adjust legal status, become citizens, or sponsor their relatives to immigrate (Schlosberg and Wiley 1998). At the same time, the implementation of many new welfare-related policies — with eligibility for some programs restricted one year and then restored the next — confused many immigrants, fostering a belief that immigrant families simply were not eligible for benefits. These factors chilled participation in benefits programs not only among noncitizen immigrants but also among their families, which often include U.S.-born children. Studies have revealed the declining use of benefits by citizen children in immigrant households (Zimmermann and Fix 1998; Brown, Wyn, and Ojeda 1999), and data from the Food and Nutrition Service (2000) indicate that the participation of U.S.-born children of legal immigrants in the federal Food Stamp Program fell 75 percent between 1995 and 1998.

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Survey Methods

LANYCIS is a rich source of information about immigrants, particularly low-income immigrants living in urban areas. More detailed information about the survey is contained in Appendix 1 of this report. This section describes some of the defining features of the new survey.

• LANYCIS has a large, statistically representative sample of 3,447 immigrant families (families with one or more foreign-born adult) in the two areas (1,893 in Los Angeles County and 1,554 in New York City). The sample includes detailed data about 7,843 "focal people" who were living in those immigrant families.
• Interviewing was conducted between August 1999 and July 2000, with most of it done between November 1999 and May 2000. The Survey Research Center of the University of California at Los Angeles administered the survey in both cities.
• The survey has a large sample of low-income immigrant families, and it oversamples those who were receiving or had received food stamps, as well as those with incomes below 200 percent of the poverty line. All analyses presented here are weighted to correct for sampling and to align with Census data. The overall response rate (the estimated share of targeted people who answered the survey) was 69 percent, which is high when compared to other random digit dialing (RDD) surveys, suggesting a strong response to the survey.⁽⁸⁾
• The survey collected a broad array of economic, employment, demographic, health, and program participation data about immigrant families.
• Unlike most surveys, LANYCIS collected self-reported information about immigrants' legal status, such as whether a person is a lawful permanent resident, refugee, naturalized citizen, or undocumented alien.
• Data were collected through both telephone and in-person interviews, using computer-assisted technologies.
• Interviews were conducted in five languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese (Mandarin), Russian, and Vietnamese. The majority of interviews were done in Spanish.⁽⁹⁾

Although LANYCIS did not interview native citizen families, in many cases we can compare the survey's immigrant families to native citizen families in California or New York, drawn from the Urban Institute's 1999 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF II) (Wigton and Weil 2000; Capps 2001). This was a survey of 42,000 households drawn to be statistically representative of nonelderly families in 13 states, including New York and California, and the rest of the nation. NSAF II was conducted from February to October 1999. Since LANYCIS and NSAF have comparable time frames and share many questions, we are able to compare LANYCIS data about immigrant families in Los Angeles County and New York City with NSAF II data for the native-born in California and New York State.

NSAF II was designed to represent states, not individual communities. While we would have preferred to compare LANYCIS data with NSAF II data about native citizens from Los Angeles County and New York City only, the NSAF data are not necessarily representative of those two areas. Based on the advice from the researchers who developed NSAF, we used state-level comparison groups in this report. Furthermore, since NSAF II did not sample elderly families, there were no good comparison groups for the elderly immigrants in LANYCIS. We acknowledge that the comparison groups are imperfect, and warn readers against drawing strong causal inferences from these comparisons; they should be viewed as simple, descriptive comparisons.

Both LANYCIS and NSAF II were designed as carefully as possible; nevertheless, there may be errors or omissions because respondents misunderstand the questions, do not know the answers, have imperfect memories, or do not want to reveal secrets. The risks of misreporting might be higher for immigrants than for the general population because of language problems or cultural misunderstanding. Moreover, a small share of the interviews were conducted face-to-face, while the bulk were done over the telephone. With sensitive issues such as legal status documentation discussed, the mode of the interview may have influenced responses. We used a variety of methods to reduce survey problems, such as pretesting the survey; having the survey conducted by a well-known, trusted organization (the University of California at Los Angeles); administering the survey in several languages; using computer-assisted interview techniques; and using multiethnic interviewers. We also conducted in-person, follow-back interviews with a sample (200) of families to both amplify and verify telephone survey responses. But we acknowledge the potential for reporting errors in this survey, as in any other.

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Type and Number of Immigrants

In general, the survey can be considered representative of all immigrant households in the two areas, although there are small exceptions discussed in Appendix 1. It focused on immigrant households — those that contain people with diverse legal statuses. For readers less familiar with complex immigration terminology and concepts, the box on the following page contains a few somewhat simplified definitions.

In this report, the term "immigrant" means a foreign-born person in the United States, who may be either a naturalized citizen or a noncitizen (either undocumented, temporary or permanent resident).⁽¹⁰⁾ This differs somewhat from the terminology used by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which uses "immigrant" to mean those who are lawfully admitted to the United States for permanent residence. Our definition encompasses undocumented aliens and people with temporary status, while INS would consider them illegal residents and non-immigrants (since those with temporary visas are not admitted as residents). We use "immigrant" to encompass all families in the LANYCIS sample and to correspond to the broader, non-technical use of the word. We apologize for any confusion, but note that most tables in this report provide more detailed classifications of immigration status, which should make this problem less severe. We also note that some members of immigrant families are native citizens, including U.S.-born spouses of immigrants or their children. While we provide detailed data about citizen children, in most tables we exclude data about native citizen adults in immigrant families because the main focus of interest is adults who are immigrants themselves.

Sometimes, we use the phrase "noncitizen" which means foreign-born people who have not become naturalized citizens. This includes legal permanent residents, refugees, undocumented aliens and other legal immigrants.

Immigration status was self-reported. Because most of the data collection was done over the telephone, it was not possible to ask for or inspect immigration documents. Immigration rules are complex and can be confusing, and thus, respondents may have given erroneous answers. For example, a person might enter the United States because of fear of persecution in his or her home country and describe himself or herself as a refugee, yet not be officially recognized as a refugee by the INS. As described in Appendix 2, we recoded a limited number of responses. For example, a person who said they entered on a tourist visa several years ago and who reported no other immigration documentation was reclassified as an undocumented alien.

Two other terms should be defined:

• Household refers to people who are living with the focal immigrant in the same dwelling unit, regardless of whether the people are related. A household may consist of a single person.
• Family refers to related people who are living in the same household. We include both marital and nonmarital partners in determining the relationships within a household.⁽¹¹⁾ A family may include a single person. Thus, a four-person nuclear family, a single childless person, an unmarried couple living together, and a seven-person multigenerational family would all be enumerated as families in the data that follow. In most cases, the household and the family are the same, but in some cases there may be unrelated people in the household who would not be considered as part of the immigrants' family.

Table 1.1 presents the number and types of people living in immigrant families in the two cities: about 4.8 million people in Los Angeles County and 3.5 million people in New York City. These totals account for almost half of the 10.1 million residents of Los Angeles County and more than a quarter of the 11.6 million in New York City.

Table 1.1a.
Detailed Immigration Status of Focal Household Members, 1999-2000 Los Angeles County

	Unweighted sample size	Weighted number in county (thousands)	Weighted percent in sample	Number Arriving Post-1996 (thousands)	Share Arriving Post-1996
TOTAL - ALL AGES
Grand Total, All Focal People	4,748	4,823	100.0%	389	8.1%
Native citizens*	1,520	1,657	34.4%	X	X
Naturalized citizens	943	1,099	22.8%	6	0.5%
Lawful permanent residents (LPRs)	1,132	1,049	21.8%	108	10.3%
Refugees/asylees**	200	136	2.8%	15	11.4%
Other legal immigrants***	41	67	1.4%	40	60.6%
Undocumented aliens	912	814	16.9%	219	26.9%
ADULTS (18-64 years old)
Subtotal, Adults	2,911	2,974	100.0%	293	9.9%
Native citizens*	137	225	7.6%	X	X
Naturalized citizens	772	967	32.5%	4	0.4%
Lawful permanent residents (LPRs)	996	917	30.8%	72	7.9%
Refugees/asylees**	165	117	3.9%	10	8.9%
Other legal immigrants***	38	66	2.2%	39	60.0%
Undocumented aliens	803	682	22.9%	167	24.5%
ELDERLY (65 or older)****
Subtotal, Elderly	236	158	100.0%	7	4.2%
Native citizens*	10	8	5.2%	X	X
Naturalized citizens	135	102	64.7%	0	0.2%
Lawful permanent residents (LPRs)	64	33	20.9%	4	12.0%
Refugees/asylees**	15	8	4.8%	1	17.6%
Other legal immigrants***	3	1	0.6%	1	100.0%
Undocumented aliens	9	6	3.7%	0	1.7%
CHILDREN (0 -17 years) - by own status
Subtotal, Children	1,601	1,691	100.0%	89	5.2%
Native citizens*	1373	1,424	84.2%	X	X
Naturalized citizens	36	30	1.8%	1	4.0%
Lawful permanent residents (LPRs)	72	99	5.9%	32	32.1%
Refugees/asylees**	20	12	0.7%	4	31.7%
Other legal immigrants***	0	0	0.0%	0	0.0%
Undocumented aliens	100	126	7.5%	52	41.2%
CHILDREN - by parents' status
Noncitizen children in:
Naturalized families	0	0	0.0%	0	0.0%
LPR families	60	70	29.2%	19	27.1%
Refugee families	24	25	10.5%	14	55.3%
Other alien families	1	1	0.4%	0	0.0%
Undocumented families	108	143	60.0%	55	38.3%
Citizen children in:
Naturalized families	272	422	41.0%	1	0.3%
LPR families	517	519	50.4%	0	0.0%
Refugee families	84	67	6.5%	0	0.0%
Other alien families	3	4	0.4%	0	0.0%
Undocumented families	527	439	42.7%	0	0.0%
* Native-born adults are primarily spouses or other family members of foreign-born adults **Includes those originally admitted as refugees or asylees, who are not naturalized *** Includes those with temporary work visas, student visas, PRUCOL, etc. **** Sample does not fully represent native-born elderly people living in immigrant households X' Denotes small sample size. Source: Urban Institute, Los Angeles New York City Immigration Survey (LANYCIS)

Table 1.1b.
Detailed Immigration Status of Focal Household Members, 1999-2000 New York City

	Unweighted sample size	Weighted number in county (thousands)	Weighted percent in sample	Number Arriving Post-1996 (thousands)	Share Arriving Post-1996
TOTAL - ALL AGES
Grand Total, All Focal People	3,096	3,496	100.0%	371	10.6%
Native citizens*	635	1,003	28.7%	X	X
Naturalized citizens	1022	938	26.8%	4	0.5%
Lawful permanent residents (LPRs)	812	1,019	29.1%	178	17.5%
Refugees/asylees**	292	140	4.0%	32	22.7%
Other legal immigrants***	79	95	2.7%	52	54.4%
Undocumented aliens	256	301	8.6%	105	34.9%
ADULTS (18-64 years old)
Subtotal, Adults	1,903	2,157	100.0%	271	12.5%
Native citizens*	85	139	6.4%	X	X
Naturalized citizens	732	750	34.8%	2	0.3%
Lawful permanent residents (LPRs)	617	814	37.7%	114	14.0%
Refugees/asylees**	173	97	4.5%	17	17.6%
Other legal immigrants***	70	82	3.8%	39	47.7%
Undocumented aliens	226	275	12.8%	98	35.6%
ELDERLY (65 or older)****
Subtotal, Elderly	450	259	100.0%	13	5.0%
Native citizens*	8	6	2.1%	X	X
Naturalized citizens	256	163	62.8%	1	0.3%
Lawful permanent residents (LPRs)	102	60	23.2%	2	2.7%
Refugees/asylees**	80	30	11.5%	11	36.6%
Other legal immigrants***	0	0	0.0%	0	0.0%
Undocumented aliens	4	1	0.4%	0	0.0%
CHILDREN (0 -17 years) - by own status
Subtotal, Children	743	1,080	100.0%	87	8.1%
Native citizens*	542	858	79.5%	X	X
Naturalized citizens	34	26	2.4%	2	5.9%
Lawful permanent residents (LPRs)	93	144	13.4%	63	43.3%
Refugees/asylees**	39	14	1.3%	4	28.3%
Other legal immigrants***	9	13	1.2%	12	0.0%
Undocumented aliens	26	25	2.3%	7	28.3%
CHILDREN - by parents' status
Noncitizen children in:
Naturalized families	0	0	0.0%	0	0.0%
LPR families	84	139	70.8%	60	43.4%
Refugee families	42	16	8.2%	4	24.5%
Other alien families	10	13	6.6%	12	92.3%
Undocumented families	31	28	14.3%	9	33.7%
Citizen children in:
Naturalized families	215	342	38.7%	0	0.0%
LPR families	22	31	3.6%	0	0.0%
Refugee families	6	6	0.7%	0	0.0%
Other alien families	261	404	45.7%	2	0.0%
Undocumented families	72	100	11.4%	0	0.0%
* Native-born adults are primarily spouses or other family members of foreign-born adults ** Includes those originally admitted as refugees or asylees, who are not naturalized *** Includes those with temporary work visas, student visas, PRUCOL, etc. **** Sample does not fully represent native-born elderly people living in immigrant households X' Denotes small sample size. Source: Urban Institute, Los Angeles New York City Immigration Survey (LANYCIS)

Many immigrant families have members who are not foreign-born. Indeed, in both cities roughly a third of the members are native-born citizens, giving testament to the importance and scope of mixed-status families (Fix and Zimmermann 1999). Similarly, there are substantial numbers of naturalized citizens: 1.1 million in Los Angeles County and about 900,000 in New York City. Importantly for the policy issues discussed in this report, there are roughly 1 million LPRs in each city. New York has more refugees than Los Angeles (300,000 versus 200,000), but Los Angeles has more than three times as many undocumented immigrants as New York: 900,000 compared to 250,000.

Thus, the legal status composition of immigrant families differs between the two cities. The share who are LPRs, refugees, naturalized citizens, or other legal immigrants is larger in New York City than Los Angeles, which has more native citizens and undocumented aliens in these immigrant families.

The children of immigrants are disproportionately native citizens (84 percent in Los Angeles and 80 percent in New York), highlighting the differences in legal status of parents and children in immigrant families.⁽¹²⁾ We have described the immigration status of children in terms of both their own status and their parents' immigration status (e.g., citizen children with LPR or undocumented parents).⁽¹³⁾ This was done because most children were native citizens, but there are still important policy distinctions that might differentiate these children, depending on whether their parents are naturalized citizens, LPRs, or undocumented.

Table 1.1 also shows the number of people who are post-enactment immigrants.⁽¹⁴⁾ A large number of the recent immigrants are either undocumented or other legal immigrants (e.g., on temporary visas). Much of the focus of federal eligibility changes for immigrants concerns post-enactment LPRs and refugees. However, as mentioned earlier, the number of post-enactment legal immigrants is likely grow steadily over time as new immigrants are admitted.

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Use of Public Benefit Programs

The question of whether immigrants use benefits at rates higher than the general population has been a central issue in the debate surrounding immigrants' use of public benefits, a debate which greatly affected the 1996 legislative changes (Borjas and Hilton 1996; Fix, Passel, and Zimmermann 1996). Analyses have shown that, in general, immigrants have higher participation rates in many assistance programs than native families, but that low-income immigrants have lower participation rates than low-income native families (e.g., Fix and Passel 1999; Ku and Matani 2001). Immigrants tend to be poorer than the native-born (partially because of differences in educational attainment, English language skills, and larger family sizes), which leads immigrants, as a whole, to use public benefits more often (Fix and Passel 1994). When compared with low-income native citizens, however, low-income immigrants typically are less likely to use benefits.

It is useful to note that, while the survey asks respondents to report whether they receive benefits like Medicaid or food stamps, respondents cannot normally determine whether the benefits are from federally funded programs or state-funded supplemental programs. California, and to a smaller extent New York, provides state-funded supplemental benefits in addition to the federally-authorized benefits. Since the state-funded supplemental programs have the same names as the regular federal programs, recipients are typically unaware of whether, for example, they are receiving federally funded or state funded food stamps. Thus, the receipt of public benefits described in this report should be not be interpreted as necessarily being federally-funded benefits.⁽¹⁵⁾

Figure 1.1 and Table 1.2 compare rates of current program participation (at the time of the interview) for low-income families (i.e., those with incomes below twice the poverty level).⁽¹⁶⁾ We compared data about low-income nonelderly families in immigrant households in Los Angeles and New York City with estimates for low-income nonelderly families in native citizen households in California and New York.⁽¹⁷⁾ Since the exhibits measure participation by families, they define participation as current use of a program benefit by any member of the family. In some cases, only one person might be receiving benefits.

Figure 1.1.
Percent of Low-income Immigrant and Native Citizen Families with at Least One Member Using Public Benefit Programs

Table 1.2.
Benefits Program Participation among Low-income Non-elderly Immigrant Families*

Category	Low-income non-elderly families*	Share of low-income non-elderly families* with at least one member receiving
		TANF	Food Stamps	SSI	Medicaid
Los Angeles County
All immigrant families	903,380	10.6%	13.0%	2.7%	34.4%
Naturalized citizens	220,425	10.4%	11.8%	4.3%	24.2%
Lawful permanent residents	391,478	8.5%	10.1%	2.9%	28.5%
Refugees or asylees	66,231	8.6%	11.5%	3.0%	30.3%
Other legal immigrants**	37,930	x	x	x	x
Undocumented aliens**	407,261	8.2%	10.9%	0.3%	30.5%
Native citizens in immigrant HHs	480	69.9%	69.9%	0.0%	69.9%
Native citizen families in California***	3,390,676	33.7%	34.4%	8.8%	36.7%
New York City
All immigrant families	577,015	5.6%	21.8%	9.8%	42.3%
Naturalized citizens	189,694	7.8%	24.4%	19.1%	47.3%
Lawful permanent residents	333,688	3.4%	14.2%	3.5%	34.4%
Refugees or asylees	52,626	1.7%	20.8%	15.3%	32.3%
Other legal immigrants**	27,852	0.0%	0.2%	0.2%	0.8%
Undocumented aliens**	162,848	3.2%	13.0%	0.4%	14.0%
Native citizen families in New York State***	2,159,440	8.6%	33.5%	17.1%	43.5%
* Low-income non-elderly families have incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, and they have no members ages 65 or over. **Other legal and undocumented alien families may include members who are native citizens or who are otherwise qualified to receive public benefits. *** Comparison group data from the 1999 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF II). All immigrant data from LANYCIS. Notes: For definition of family immigration status, see Appendix 2. "x" denotes small sample size.

The classification of families by immigration status was based on the status of the respondent and his/her spouse. If the respondent and spouse did not have the same immigration status, we assigned the family status using a hierarchy, with undocumented alien first, then other legal, refugee/asylee, LPR, naturalized citizen, and, finally, native-born citizen.

In general, low-income immigrant families had lower program participation rates than low-income native citizen families. For example, 13 percent of low-income noncitizen families in Los Angeles and 22 percent in New York City received food stamps, compared with 34 percent of low-income native citizen families in each state. Immigrant families also had substantially lower participation in TANF than native families.⁽¹⁸⁾ Differences were smaller for Medicaid: 34 percent of low-income immigrant families in Los Angeles had at least one member enrolled, compared to 37 percent of native citizen families in California. In New York City, the rate of Medicaid use among low-income immigrant families was 42 percent versus 44 percent for native citizen families in the state of New York. These findings are consistent with Urban Institute analyses of CPS data for the late 1990s that show steeper declines in noncitizen participation and greater differences between citizen and noncitizen participation for TANF and food stamps than for Medicaid (Fix and Passel 2002).

These participation rates simply show the percentage of families using benefits as a share of low-income families. They do not attempt to measure the percent of eligible people who are enrolled in the programs. For example, the percentages on SSI appear quite low because the denominator includes all low-income families, not just those with members who are elderly or disabled with incomes below the SSI income threshold.

In New York participation rates were generally higher for naturalized citizens and refugees than for legal permanent residents (LPRs) and other noncitizens. Naturalized citizens and refugees there were more likely to have retained eligibility for federal programs, while many LPRs, particularly recent immigrants, lost eligibility. But this was not the case in Los Angeles, where the State of California extended food stamps to post-enactment LPRs. Prior research (Fix and Passel 1999) found that refugees tend to have higher participation levels than LPRs. When they arrive in the United States, resettlement programs help refugees apply for public benefits that meet their immediate basic needs and help them develop the skills necessary for longer-term self-sufficiency through education, training and job placement programs.

As for naturalized citizens, it seems that their citizenship status helps confer eligibility for benefit programs. In the mid-1990s, following the passage of PRWORA, there was a surge in the number of immigrants who applied to naturalize, from 540,000 in 1994 to 1.4 million in 1997, followed by a decline to 760,000 in 1999 (Immigration and Naturalization Service 2001). While most of the surge in naturalization applications was due to a dramatic rise in the number of eligible legal immigrants, some of these immigrants may have naturalized to ensure that they retained eligibility for public benefits.⁽¹⁹⁾ During the mid-1990s, there also was a large increase in the number of naturalized citizens receiving benefits. For instance, between 1994 and 1998 the number of naturalized citizens participating in the Food Stamp Program nearly doubled from 247,000 to 409,000 (and their share of all participants increased from 0.9 to 2 percent), while the number of LPR participants decreased from 1.45 million to 405,000, or from 5 to 2 percent of all participants (Cody and Castner 1999: 27; Castner and Rosso 2000: 20).

In New York and Los Angeles, the survey data reveal some program participation by families that were classified as other legal or undocumented immigrants. The most likely reason is that some of the members of these families, particularly children, were native citizens or permanent residents who were still eligible for benefits. In some cases, undocumented or other legal immigrants may be partially eligible for benefits, such as emergency Medicaid. Another possible explanation is that people misreported either their immigration or program participation status, a problem in any self-reported survey.⁽²⁰⁾ Finally, there may have been some degree of program error or abuse, in which families participated in programs for which they were not eligible. However, public benefit programs require relatively thorough verification of proper immigration status before providing benefits. Applicants are generally required to submit relevant immigration documents as proof of status. Moreover, welfare offices are required to verify applicants' immigration statuses using the INS's Systematic Alien Verification of Entitlements (SAVE) online database or a similar method.

Food Stamp Benefits

While most of the public benefit programs continued to serve immigrants who entered the country on or before August 1996, the legislative changes for the Food Stamp Program required that many currently participating households be disqualified. When PRWORA was enacted in August 1996, it made most legal immigrants ineligible for food stamps. New immigrant applicants became ineligible and those already receiving food stamps were disqualified as of August 1997 (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 1997). In 1998, Congress restored food stamp benefits to legal immigrant children, disabled people, and elders already admitted to the United States as of August 22, 1996. Elders must also have been 65 or older on that date (Carmody and Dean 1998). PRWORA also allowed states, using their own funding, to provide additional food assistance to legal immigrants who became ineligible for the federal FSP. California and New York State both provide benefits similar to food stamps to legal immigrants ineligible under the federal rules. Further detail concerning immigrant eligibility for food stamps is provided at the beginning of Part II of this report.

Because food stamps are provided as a household-level benefit, rather than as an individual benefit (like Medicaid), loss of food stamp eligibility may lead to either a complete loss of benefits or to a benefit reduction. The food stamp benefit is based on the number of people in the household and the household income: a four-person household with the same net income as a two-person household will get a bigger food stamp allotment, but not twice as big. Thus even if an individual immigrant becomes ineligible for food stamps, his or her household might still receive food stamps because other members, usually U.S.-born children, are still eligible. However, the household's food stamp allotment would be somewhat smaller since it is based on fewer eligible people. Despite the fact that FSP eligibility is determined on a household basis, our analyses of food stamp participation here refer to families because LANYCIS focused on one immigrant family within each household surveyed.

Figure 1.2 provides information about the history of food stamp use, loss and reduction among noncitizen families who reported receiving food stamps at some period during 1996 or 1997.⁽²¹⁾ Note that the data shown might not correspond to the total number of noncitizens who received benefits in those areas during that time period. This is because some noncitizens became naturalized citizens since then, some immigrants moved out of the area (and thus were not in the interview sample in 1999-2000), and, perhaps most importantly, some respondents had imperfect recall of participation three to four years prior to the interview.

Figure 1.2.
Changes in Food Stamp Participation among Families Reporting Food Stamps Receipt in 1996 or 1997

In both Los Angeles and New York City, among those who received benefits in 1996-97, there was a substantial reduction in food stamp use by noncitizen families by 1999-2000. About 30 percent of 1996-97 recipient families in Los Angeles and 20 percent in New York City lost food stamp benefits completely by 1998, while others continued to participate but had reduced benefit levels. By the date of the interview (in 1999 or 2000), 55 percent of those with food stamps in 1996-97 in Los Angeles and 42 percent in New York City had lost all benefits. Among families continuing to receive food stamps, a majority experienced a reduction in allotments.⁽²²⁾

This does not necessarily mean that these groups of immigrants lost benefits only because of their immigration status; their incomes might have become too high or they may have left the program for other reasons, including confusion or fear of immigration-related consequences. Furthermore, although these groups lost food stamp benefits, other noncitizen families had joined the program since 1996-97. In Los Angeles, 27 percent of those receiving food stamps at the time of the interview had joined since then, while in New York the figure was 25 percent. Presumably, these new entrants are people who were already in the United States in August 1996 but had not participated earlier or who entered the country since that time, especially those entering as refugees (although California serves some post-enactment immigrants who are not refugees).

These longitudinal data should not be confused with caseload trend data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, based on their quality control sample. The USDA data show that the number of legal noncitizen immigrants who were on the Food Stamp Program dropped 83 percent between 1994 and 1998, while the number of U.S.-born children in legal noncitizen families using food stamps fell by 75 percent (Food and Nutrition Service 2000). One distinction is that the Food and Nutrition Service data only report information for those receiving federally funded benefits, while the survey data in this report also include state-funded food stamps received by immigrant families (since the families themselves typically cannot tell the difference).

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Immigrants' Understanding about Program Eligibility

As shown in Table 1.1, a modest proportion of all immigrants were post-enactment LPRs⁽²³⁾, the main group of immigrants who lost eligibility for many programs under PRWORA (though many pre-enactment immigrants also lost eligibility for the Food Stamp Program). The drop-off in immigrants' use of benefits since 1996 suggests that many of those who exited the programs were still eligible, including immigrants who entered the country before 1996 and citizen children in immigrant families. The survey data indicate that some of these people may have dropped off or failed to participate because of fears and confusion regarding the new legislation. Many immigrants believe, for instance, that getting benefits might endanger their immigration status or prevent them from getting green cards, reentering the country, or becoming citizens. Further, many families were confused by the complex changes in immigration and welfare law that occurred in 1996 and may have believed that all immigrants were disqualified.

To examine immigrants' perceptions and understanding, we probed respondents' knowledge of program rules. They were asked to assess whether the following statements were true or false or if they did not know the answer:

1. If someone who isn't a citizen receives Medicaid [or Medi-Cal] he will probably have to pay it back to become a citizen. [correct answer is false]
2. An immigrant who receives a welfare check from the government cannot become a citizen. [correct answer is false]
3. Think about the case in which immigrant parents have children who were born in the United States. If these children get Medicaid [or Medi-Cal] then their parents cannot get green cards. [correct answer is false]

As seen in Tables 1.3 and 1.4, in 1999-2000 there was still substantial confusion among immigrants about eligibility for public benefits, and many believed that getting benefits like Medicaid might have adverse consequences. In general, at least half of the respondents knew the correct answer to a single question, but only 30 percent in Los Angles and 37 percent in New York knew all three answers. For each question, wrong answers and "Don't Know" answers were roughly evenly divided. The question that was the least likely to be answered correctly concerned repayment of Medicaid benefits.

Table 1.3.
Immigrant Understanding of Program Eligibility Rules and Consequences
(Individual Items in LANYCIS Survey)

Topic/question	Share of respondents (in both cities) answering question			Share with wrong or "don't know" answers
				Los Angeles		New York City
	Correctly	Incorrectly	"Don't know"	All Respondents	Low-income* Noncitizens	All Respondents	Low-income* Noncitizens
1. "Immigrants might have to pay back Medicaid benefits." (Correct answer is false)	47.8%	27.0%	25.2%	55.0%	62.0%	48.9%	61.1%
2. "Immigrants who get welfare cannot become citizens." (Correct answer is false)	61.3%	18.5%	20.2%	41.6%	51.5%	35.2%	47.9%
3. "If citizen children get Medicaid, then immigrant parents can't get green cards." (Correct answer is false)	63.9%	16.6%	19.4%	34.7%	39.0%	37.7%	44.8%

Table 1.4.
Immigrant Understanding of Program Eligibility Rules and Consequences (Composite Score on Items in LANYCIS Survey)

Composite responses	Share of respondents …	Los Angeles		New York City
	Both cities, all respondents	All Respondents	Low-income* Noncitizens	All Respondents	Low-income* Noncitizens
All answers correct	33.1%	30.0%	21.0%	36.8%	24.5%
2 answers correct	26.9%	27.9%	27.9%	25.7%	24.6%
1 answer correct	19.9%	22.8%	28.7%	16.4%	23.5%
All answers wrong or don't know	20.1%	19.2%	22.3%	21.1%	27.4%
* Low-income noncitizens live in families with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Source: Urban Institute, LANYCIS

We considered the possibility that low-income noncitizens might have more accurate responses, since they were more likely to be eligible for benefits. Contrary to this expectation, this group was slightly less likely to answer correctly or know the answer. That is, the people for whom the eligibility distinctions are most important were slightly more confused about the rules or worried about how they might be affected adversely. For instance, over 60 percent of low-income noncitizens in each city believed that they would have to repay Medicaid benefits.

It is important to note that LANYCIS was conducted from late 1999 through mid-2000, after the INS issued a policy guidance in May 1999 that the receipt of food stamps, SCHIP, or Medicaid (except for long-term care) would not be used in the determination of public charge status. Nonetheless, at the time of the survey, a high level of misunderstanding and concern about adverse consequences persisted in immigrant communities. In Los Angeles, the county Department of Social Services, health care providers, and community groups worked together with the Spanish-language news media to conduct outreach to let the public know that getting Medicaid was "safe" for immigrant families. Community education efforts also occurred in New York, albeit fewer of them (Ku and Freilich, forthcoming). The survey data do not mean that the community education efforts were fruitless, however; they may have incrementally improved understanding. Indeed, our case studies suggested that public charge concerns and confusion were greater initially in Los Angeles than New York, but that the additional community outreach in southern California may have helped bring levels of understanding up to those comparable to New York.

There have been a number of anecdotal and case study/focus group reports about immigrants' confusion concerning participation in public benefit programs (Schlosberg and Wiley 1998; Maloy et al. 2000; Feld and Power 2000). To the best of our knowledge, this analysis of LANYCIS is the first to systematically document that such confusion and concerns remained a year after the INS clarified its policies regarding public charge status.

In some ways, it is not surprising that many respondents do not understand program requirements; the rules are complicated and change from time to time. Earlier research has found that, in general low-income people often do not understand eligibility rules and that this can be a serious impediment to participation (Shuptrine and McKenzie 1996; Perry et al. 2000). However, the survey data reveal that, in addition to not understanding certain rules, many immigrants also worry that they might actually be affected adversely — be unable to get residency or citizenship, or be forced to repay Medicaid benefits — if they participated in programs.

LANYCIS does not provide unambiguous evidence regarding whether immigrants who misunderstand program rules or the consequences of program participation are less likely to receive benefits. On the one hand, there appears to be a correlation between Medicaid use and proper understanding of eligibility and immigration consequences. Figure 1.3 shows that poor immigrant adults who had one or more answers right were more likely to participate in Medicaid than those with no answers correct and the probability of participation was highest for those who answered two out of three questions correctly. One explanation for this finding is that those who participated in Medicaid were inherently likely to understand program rules, since they had managed to enroll.

Figure 1.3.
Relationship of Understanding of Program Rules to Medicaid Participation Rates for Noncitizen Poor Adults

On the other hand, the correlation between understanding of program rules and receipt of food stamps is more tenuous, as shown in Figure 1.4. When compared to the number of correct responses to these questions, there is not much variation in FSP participation during the year prior to the survey. Participation was 14 percent among families with respondents answering no questions correctly, compared to 17 percent among those answering all questions correctly. Responses to in-depth surveys offer some reasons why. In one example, an undocumented respondent feared that food stamp receipt could prevent him and his wife from obtaining legal status. Yet, when they both lost their jobs, their financial crisis was serious enough for them to apply for food stamps for their children. As soon as they got back on their feet, they stopped their food stamp benefits. In another case, a respondent feared that food stamp receipt would influence his wife's citizenship application. Since both adults were employed, they were able to avoid applying for TANF or food stamps. Some respondents did complain about social service agency staff incorrectly telling them that benefits receipt would prevent them from legalizing or naturalizing. Still, it appears that many immigrant families apply for food stamps when they face a serious financial or economic crisis.

Figure 1.4.
Relationship of Understanding of Program Rules to Food Stamp Receipt in the Year Prior to the Survey

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Income and Employment

In both Los Angeles and New York City, there is great diversity among immigrants in terms of national origin, legal status, and socioeconomic status. Nonetheless, on average, immigrant families are poorer than native citizen families and face more financial difficulties, for a variety of reasons, including language barriers and low educational attainment.

Figure 1.5 and Table 1.5 show that immigrant families were substantially poorer than native citizen families in both California and New York, based on annual incomes for 1998: 31 percent of immigrant families in Los Angeles and 30 percent in New York City had incomes below the federal poverty level, compared with 15 percent of native citizen families in California and 14 percent in New York State. Similarly, immigrant families were more likely to have incomes between 101 and 200 percent of the poverty level and less likely to have incomes between 201 and 300 percent or above 300 percent of poverty.⁽²⁴⁾

Figure 1.5.
Income Distribution of Immigrant and Native Citizen Families

Table 1.5.
Poverty among Immigrant Families,
with Comparison to Native Citizen Families in California and New York State

	Share of families in income range
	0 - 100% of Poverty Level	101-200% of Poverty Level	201 - 300% of Poverty Level	Over 300% of Poverty Level
Immigrant families in Los Angeles
All immigrant families	30.6%	30.2%	14.8%	24.4%
Naturalized citizen families	19.7%	18.5%	19.3%	42.5%
All noncitizen families	36.5%	36.4%	12.5%	14.5%
All LPR families	27.5%	36.1%	14.7%	21.7%
Pre-enactment (Aug. 1996)	27.3%	36.2%	14.5%	22.0%
Post-enactment (August 1996)	30.1%	35.8%	16.4%	17.8%
Refugee/asylee families	37.3%	45.4%	12.4%	4.9%
Other legal immigrant families	55.7%	10.3%	10.5%	23.5%
Undocumented families	45.9%	38.4%	10.0%	5.7%
Native citizen families in California*	15.1%	12.6%	16.6%	55.7%
Immigrant families in New York City
All immigrant families	30.4%	22.5%	17.8%	29.3%
Naturalized citizen families	24.3%	17.0%	19.4%	39.3%
All noncitizen families	34.4%	26.0%	15.8%	23.7%
All LPR families	31.0%	25.2%	20.8%	23.0%
Pre-enactment (Aug. 1996)	29.3%	22.2%	21.9%	26.6%
Post-enactment (August 1996)	39.6%	40.2%	15.3%	4.9%
Refugee/asylee families	44.8%	26.4%	6.4%	22.4%
Other legal immigrant families	43.9%	1.0%	4.3%	50.7%
Undocumented families	36.9%	35.0%	9.3%	18.8%
Native citizen families in New York State*	13.6%	15.6%	12.8%	58.0%
* Comparison group data at state level from the 1999 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF II). All immigrant data from LANYCIS. Note: For definition of family immigration status, see Appendix 2.

Immigration and economic status are linked. Naturalized citizen families were the least likely to be poor and were the closest to native citizen families in income levels. By contrast, refugees, other legal immigrants and undocumented aliens had relatively high rates of poverty. They were all about three times as likely as native citizen families to be poor.

In addition, Figure 1.6 shows that post-enactment legal immigrant families were poorer than pre-enactment immigrant families in New York City (40 versus 29 percent) and just as poor in Los Angeles (30 versus 27 percent).⁽²⁵⁾ In Los Angeles, post-enactment LPR families were twice as likely to live below the poverty level as native citizen families. In New York, they were three times as likely as natives to be poor.⁽²⁶⁾

Figure 1.6.
Income Distribution of Pre- and Post-Enactment Legal Permanent Residents

These data are consistent with other research about the process by which immigrants become integrated - both economically and socially - in American society (Fix and Zimmermann 2000; Portes and Rumbaut 2000; Passel and Van Hook 2000; Smith and Edmonston 1997). It takes time for immigrants to become established in their communities, to get better jobs and to improve their English language skills — all of which can eventually lead to higher incomes. On average, the longer they stay in America, the more that immigrants' incomes rise. Urban Institute analyses of Census data indicate that LPRs who have been in the U.S. for ten or more years have incomes that are roughly equal to those of native-born citizens (Fix and Zimmermann 2000). Moreover, the research also shows that immigrants generally become integrated over generations, since immigrants' children often have higher incomes than immigrants themselves.

The gap in the economic status of recent and longstanding immigrants is relevant because legal immigrant eligibility for public benefit programs is based on date of admission to the United States: those who entered recently are largely barred from federal TANF, food stamps, SSI, and Medicaid. Ironically, these LPR families are barred from the federal public benefit programs during an early part of their residence in the United States when they are poorer and may be more in need of assistance, and become eligible later, when they are somewhat better off. (Immigrants who have been in the United States for a somewhat longer time period, e.g., five to ten years, still have relatively low incomes, however.)

The higher level of poverty among immigrants entering since 1996, especially in New York, is also relevant because of the changes in the law that sought to limit the admission of low-income immigrants whose sponsors' income did not exceed 125 percent of the poverty level and that made sponsors more responsible for the immigrant's welfare. Despite these policies, it appears that a large number of recent immigrants continue to have low incomes.

Even though immigrants tend to have low incomes, they participate in the labor force at levels comparable to natives. As shown in Table 1.6, seventy-eight percent of all adult immigrants in Los Angeles and 80 percent in New York City were in the labor force, meaning that they were either working or seeking work. Among those in the labor force, almost 10 percent of the immigrants in both areas were unemployed. The labor force participation levels were comparable to native citizen adults in California and New York (80 to 81 percent), but native citizens had somewhat lower unemployment rates (6 to 7 percent). Self-employment rates for immigrants are comparable to those of native citizens in Los Angeles, but a few percentage points higher in New York.

Table 1.6.
Labor Force Characteristics of Immigrant Adults, with Comparison to Native Citizen Adults in California and New York State

	Labor Force Participation	Share of adults in the labor force
		Unemployed	Working Part Time	Working Full Time	Self- Employed
Los Angeles County
All incomes
All adult immigrants	78.1%	9.8%	15.9%	73.4%	17.7%
Naturalized citizens	82.9%	7.6%	19.0%	72.6%	22.6%
Lawful permanent residents	75.8%	10.4%	12.4%	77.1%	18.3%
Refugees or asylees	81.4%	11.3%	12.4%	76.4%	15.6%
Other legal immigrants	x	x	x	x	x
Undocumented aliens	76.7%	12.4%	16.3%	69.0%	10.3%
Native citizen adults in California*	81%	6.7%	18.2%	74.6%	16.8%
Below 200 percent of poverty
All adult immigrants	72.8%	12.8%	17.9%	68.8%	13.0%
Naturalized citizens	75.9%	12.0%	26.0%	60.1%	18.7%
Lawful permanent residents	72.4%	12.8%	13.8%	73.3%	13.7%
Refugees or asylees	82.1%	14.2%	14.6%	71.2%	9.5%
Other legal immigrants	x	x	x	x	x
Undocumented aliens	72.5%	13.0%	17.6%	69.2%	9.7%
Native citizen adults in California*	64.3%	20.9%	27.2%	49.5%	12.5%
New York City
All incomes
All adult immigrants	79.7%	9.7%	15.0%	75.2%	19.2%
Naturalized citizens	79.5%	5.2%	16.9%	77.9%	18.8%
Lawful permanent residents	80.7%	16.2%	14.5%	69.2%	19.6%
Refugees or asylees	75.1%	6.9%	8.1%	85.0%	11.6%
Other legal immigrants	x	x	x	x	x
Undocumented aliens	80.4%	6.0%	14.9%	79.1%	23.9%
Native citizen adults in New York State*	80.1%	6.3%	14.7%	78.8%	15.7%
Below 200 percent of poverty
All adult immigrants	73.0%	12.5%	18.2%	69.2%	19.5%
Naturalized citizens	62.1%	14.7%	21.0%	64.1%	16.8%
Lawful permanent residents	78.5%	13.7%	19.4%	66.8%	20.1%
Refugees or asylees	63.2%	13.2%	12.4%	74.4%	22.0%
Other legal immigrants	x	x	x	x	x
Undocumented aliens	79.7%	7.8%	12.8%	79.4%	22.0%
Native citizen adults in New York State*	58.2%	21.3%	20.9%	56.7%	16.6%
*Comparison group data from the 1999 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF II). All immigrant data from LANYCIS. Note: "x" denotes small sample size.

However, low-income immigrants — those with incomes below twice the poverty line — have higher levels of labor force participation than low-income native citizens and lower unemployment rates. Among low-income adults in both cities, 73 percent of immigrants are in the labor force, compared with 58 to 64 percent of native citizen adults. And about 13 percent of low-income immigrants in the labor force are unemployed, compared with 21 percent of low-income native citizens.

Immigrants are typically working, but still have low incomes. They often take low-wage, jobs that are less likely to provide benefits like health insurance. As mentioned above, immigrants' income and wage levels rise over time, as they stay in the United States for a longer period. But — at any given point in time — they tend to fare worse than their native-born counterparts. Thus their need for working-poor support programs such as Medicaid and Food Stamps is generally as high or higher than the need among natives in the workforce.

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Food Insecurity and Housing Need

In addition to regular income-based measures of poverty, the survey also asked respondents whether they had problems getting enough food or meeting their housing needs. The food security questions are part of a well-tested battery of food security questions (Andrews et al. 2000; Bickel et al. 2000) that measure whether families at times did not have enough food because of economic problems.

In both New York City and Los Angeles, about half of the immigrant families with incomes below twice the poverty line said they had run out of food either sometimes or often in the last year (Table 1.7 and Figure 1.7). By contrast, about one-third of low-income native citizen families in California and New York State had encountered these problems. About one-quarter of the immigrant families reported that adults had skipped or reduced the size of their meals in the previous 12 months due to economic problems. Native citizen families reported relatively similar levels of this problem (23 percent) in California, but less of it in New York State (18 percent). The relatively higher levels of food insecurity exist among most types of low-income immigrant families, regardless of whether they include naturalized citizens, LPRs, refugees, or undocumented aliens. The second part of this report provides more detailed analysis of food security among the families in LANYCIS, by comparing food security by immigration status, language ability, tenure in the United States, and family composition.

Table 1.7.
Food Security Problems among Low-income Immigrant Families*,
with Comparison to Native Citizen Famlies in California and New York State

	Share of low-income families*
	Ran out of food, sometimes or often	Adults cut size of meals or skipped them	Either problem
Immigrant families in Los Angeles
All immigrant families	50.8%	24.5%	53.7%
Naturalized citizen families	49.7%	29.6%	52.6%
All noncitizen families	51.0%	23.1%	54.0%
LPR families	53.5%	25.4%	58.4%
Refugee/asylee families	53.8%	18.2%	57.6%
Other legal immigrant families	x	x	x
Undocumented families	49.5%	23.0%	50.8%
Native citizen families in California**	36.5%	22.9%	38.9%
Immigrant families in New York City
All immigrant families	48.1%	24.9%	51.9%
Naturalized citizen families	50.0%	20.4%	53.2%
All noncitizen families	47.3%	26.7%	51.3%
LPR families	51.7%	28.7%	53.9%
Refugee/asylee families	39.3%	25.5%	40.4%
Other legal immigrant families	4.6%	18.9%	21.5%
Undocumented families	48.7%	24.2%	55.4%
Native citizen families in New York State**	32.5%	17.6%	35.7%
* Low-income families have incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. ** Comparison group data from the 1999 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF II). All immigrant data from LANYCIS. Notes: For definition of family immigration status, see Appendix 2. "x" denotes small sample size.

Figure 1.7.
Food Security and Housing Problems for Immigrant and Native Citizen Families with Incomes below 200 Percent of the Poverty Level

Research based on other surveys has also documented serious food insecurity among immigrants. Using national data from NSAF, Capps (2001) found that in 1999, nationally, 37 percent of the children of immigrants lived in families with one or more food affordability problems, compared with 27 percent for children in native citizen families. Food affordability problems were more common among immigrant families than native families in the eight states included in that NSAF analysis. Another survey of immigrants, conducted at health clinics and other service sites in California, Texas, and Illinois, found relatively high levels of food insecurity among low-income immigrant families with children (Kasper et al. 2000).

We also examined whether families had any problems paying for housing (Table 1.8 and Figure 1.7). In Los Angeles, 18 percent of low-income immigrant families had experienced problems paying their rent, mortgage, or utility bills (electricity, gas, water, or telephone) in the last 12 months, and in New York City 26 percent of such families reported similar problems. The overall prevalence of housing problems was somewhat higher for New York City immigrants than for those in Los Angeles. In contrast, only about 8 percent of low-income native citizen families in California and New York State had dealt with such problems. These findings should be interpreted with caution, however, since average housing costs in Los Angeles and New York City are much higher than in other parts of the states. It seems plausible that, like immigrants, low-income native-born families in Los Angeles and New York City might have more difficulty paying housing and utility bills than their native-born counterparts in other regions of the states.

Table 1.8.
Housing Affordability Problems among Low-income Immigrant Families,
with Comparison to Native Citizen Families in California and New York State

	Share of low-income families*
	Unable to pay rent, mortage or utility bills at least once	Had to move in with others because of problems paying rent, etc.	Either problem
Immigrant families in Los Angeles
All immigrant families	18.2%	4.9%	19.3%
Naturalized citizen families	15.1%	3.2%	17.0%
All noncitizen families	19.0%	5.4%	20.0%
LPR families	18.6%	4.1%	19.5%
Refugee/asylee families	7.7%	3.5%	8.0%
Other legal immigrant families	14.4%	2.0%	14.4%
Undocumented families	21.8%	7.4%	22.9%
Native citizen families in California*	8.3%	2.0%	9.4%
Immigrant families in New York City
All immigrant families	25.9%	4.5%	26.2%
Naturalized citizen families	23.2%	2.3%	23.3%
All noncitizen families	27.0%	5.4%	27.4%
LPR families	30.6%	6.9%	31.1%
Refugee/asylee families	22.8%	2.0%	23.7%
Other legal immigrant families	8.2%	0.0%	8.2%
Undocumented families	24.3%	4.3%	24.3%
Native citizen families in New York State*	7.7%	2.2%	8.9%
* Low-income families have incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. **Comparison group data from the 1999 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF II). All immigrant data from LANYCIS. Notes: For definition of family immigration status, see Appendix 2. "x" denotes small sample size.

Some immigrant families that experienced difficulty paying rent or mortgage also moved in with others — family, friends, or other group housing. Five percent of all low-income immigrant families in Los Angeles and 4.5 percent in New York had needed to take such a step in the preceding year. This is roughly double the frequency for native citizen families in California and New York State.

Naturalized citizen families were less likely to have housing problems than noncitizen families in Los Angeles, but in New York both groups had comparable problems. LPR and undocumented families were more likely to have housing problems than refugees or other legal immigrant families.

Capps (2001) also found, using NSAF data, that at the national level immigrant families are relatively more likely than native families to experience housing problems. In 1999, children of immigrants were more than twice as likely as children of natives (14 versus 6 percent) to live in families that paid one-half or more of their incomes for housing. Moreover, children of immigrants were four times more likely to live in crowded housing conditions (defined as two or more people per bedroom) than children of natives. However, Capps did not find at the national level a significant difference in the percentage of immigrant versus native families that reported problems meeting their rent, mortgage, or utility bills

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Health Status and Insurance Coverage

How healthy are immigrants? LANYCIS has multiple measures of self-reported health status, but the broadest measure is the response to the simple question: "In general, would you say your [or other person's] health is: excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor?" As seen in Table 1.9, immigrants — both adults and children — generally reported poorer health status than the native-born: 37-39 percent of immigrant adults had excellent or very good health, compared with 51-52 percent of native citizen adults. About 52 percent of immigrant children in Los Angeles and 65 percent in New York City were reported by respondents⁽²⁷⁾ as being in excellent or very good health, compared with 77 percent for children of native citizens in both California and New York State.

Table 1.9.
Health status among Immigrants,
with Comparison to Natives in California and New York State

	Los Angeles Co.		New York City
	Excellent or Very Good	Good, Fair or Poor	Excellent or Very Good	Good, Fair or Poor
ADULTS (18-64 years)
Adult immigrants
All immigrants combined	36.9%	62.8%	38.6%	61.3%
Naturalized citizens	43.7%	53.9%	44.1%	55.7%
Lawful permanent residents	34.4%	65.0%	30.3%	69.7%
Refugees or asylees	21.0%	78.7%	38.7%	61.2%
Other legal immigrants	x	x	81.3%	18.7%
Undocumented aliens	31.3%	68.6%	35.2%	64.8%
Native citizen adults in CA or NY State*	52.1%	47.9%	50.6%	49.4%
ELDERLY (65 years and older)
Elderly immigrants
All immigrants combined	22.1%	77.4%	17.3%	82.2%
Naturalized citizens	24.7%	75.1%	15.0%	84.7%
Lawful permanent residents	19.0%	80.6%	30.1%	68.8%
Refugees or asylees	x	x	3.5%	95.7%
Other legal immigrants	x	x	x	x
Undocumented aliens	x	x	x	x
CHILDREN (0 - 17 years)
Children of immigrants by own status
All immigrants combined	51.5%	48.5%	64.8%	34.5%
Naturalized citizens	x	x	x	x
Lawful permanent residents	53.9%	46.1%	66.3%	33.7%
Refugees or asylees	20.8%	79.2%	52.0%	48.0%
Other legal immigrants	x	x	x	x
Undocumented aliens	53.3%	46.7%	x	x
Children of immigrants by parents' status
All children in immigrant families	58.7%	41.1%	59.3%	40.4%
Noncitizen children in immigrant fams	51.6%	48.4%	64.3%	34.9%
Citizen children in immigrant families	59.8%	39.9%	58.2%	41.7%
Citizen children in:
Naturalized families	61.6%	38.3%	70.9%	28.8%
LPR families	64.9%	34.7%	40.4%	59.6%
Refugee families	48.3%	50.5%	x	x
Other legal immigrant families	x	x	x	x
Undocumented families	52.5%	47.4%	51.9%	48.1%
Noncitizen children in:
Naturalized families	x	x	x	x
LPR families	43.4%	56.6%	65.1%	34.9%
Refugee families	x	x	x	x
Other legal immigrant families	x	x	x	x
Undocumented families	48.5%	51.5%	x	x
Children of native citizens in CA or NY State*	77.0%	23.0%	76.6%	23.4%
* Comparison group data from the 1999 NSAF. All immigrant data from LANYCIS "X" denotes small sample size.

However, these findings do not necessarily mean that immigrants are in poorer health than native citizens. Some researchers have hypothesized that immigrants respond to this question differently than the native-born because of cultural differences as opposed to objective health differences. Some ethnic groups, particularly Hispanic and Asian groups, may report poorer health status because of a more fatalistic view of life or because they do not want to appear to "brag."⁽²⁸⁾ According to a recent National Academy of Sciences report, some studies have found immigrant children to be healthier than similar native citizen children; yet, immigrant children tend to become less healthy the longer they live in the United States (Hernandez and Charney 1998). There are no widely accepted measures for comparing the health status of different cultural groups, so the differences noted here should be interpreted with caution.

Among the immigrant groups surveyed, refugees were the most likely to report poorer health status. This is clinically reasonable, since refugees often come from very harsh environments in their countries of origin and are particularly known to have a high prevalence of illnesses such as tuberculosis (Walker and Jaranson 1999). But here, too, inferences should be drawn cautiously; refugees are more likely to be Asian or Eastern European and may have different cultural responses than other nationalities.

Insurance is a critical determinant of whether a person can get access to health care services. The health insurance profiles of immigrants at all income levels are shown in Table 1.10a (Los Angeles) and Table 1.10b (New York City). They reflect insurance status at the time of the survey and are tabulated so that each person has only one type of insurance assigned.⁽²⁹⁾

Table 1.10a.
Health insurance coverage among Immigrants in Los Angeles,
with Comparison to Natives in California

	Uninsured	Medicaid	Job-Based Insurance	Other Private Insurance	Medicare/ SCHIP/ Other Public
ADULTS (18-64 years)
Adult immigrants
All immigrants combined	41.8%	8.4%	39.9%	6.0%	3.9%
Naturalized citizens	22.2%	7.4%	57.8%	9.6%	3.0%
Lawful permanent residents	42.0%	10.4%	39.5%	5.2%	2.9%
Refugees or asylees	39.8%	15.1%	40.1%	3.3%	1.7%
Other legal immigrants	x	x	x	x	x
Undocumented aliens	71.0%	6.8%	13.9%	2.3%	6.0%
Native citizen adults in California*	15.0%	7.5%	69.9%	6.8%	0.8%
ELDERLY (65 years and over)
Elderly immigrants
All immigrants combined	10.2%	39.2%	19.5%	5.3%	25.8%
Naturalized citizens	9.6%	29.4%	22.2%	6.8%	32.0%
Lawful permanent residents	8.0%	53.1%	18.9%	3.0%	17.0%
Refugees or asylees	x	x	x	x	x
Other legal immigrants	x	x	x	x	x
Undocumented aliens	x	x	x	x	x
CHILDREN (0 - 17 years)
Children of immigrants by parents' status
All children in immigrant families	24.2%	35.5%	28.3%	5.6%	6.4%
Citizen children in immigrant families	21.6%	35.3%	30.9%	5.8%	6.5%
Noncitizen children in immigrant fams	39.7%	37.1%	13.0%	4.1%	6.1%
Citizen children in:
Naturalized families	x	x	x	x	x
LPR families	22.4%	35.9%	34.0%	6.6%	1.1%
Refugee families	x	x	x	x	x
Other alien families	x	x	x	x	x
Undocumented families	24.6%	66.0%	4.9%	1.6%	2.9%
Noncitizen children in:
Naturalized families	x	x	x	x	x
LPR families	55.2%	14.5%	11.6%	10.5%	8.2%
Refugee families	6.0%	60.6%	32.2%	0.0%	1.3%
Other alien families	x	x	x	x	x
Undocumented families	35.9%	55.3%	1.2%	0.0%	7.7%
Children of native citizens in California*	5.6%	16.6%	68.2%	8.6%	1.0%
* Comparison group data from the 1999 NSAF. All immigrant data from LANYCIS "X" denotes small sample size.

Table 1.10b.
Health Insurance Coverage Among Immigrants in New York City,
with Comparison to Natives in New York State

	Uninsured	Medicaid	Job-Based Insurance	Other Private Insurance	Medicare/ SCHIP/ Other Public
ADULTS (18-64 years)
Adult immigrants
All immigrants combined	38.0%	10.4%	44.2%	4.5%	2.9%
Naturalized citizens	20.5%	10.7%	57.2%	8.4%	3.2%
Lawful permanent residents	40.8%	13.6%	42.3%	1.7%	1.6%
Refugees or asylees	40.5%	17.6%	40.2%	0.8%	0.9%
Other legal immigrants	21.3%	0.3%	58.2%	7.7%	12.6%
Undocumented aliens	79.4%	1.1%	13.4%	2.5%	3.6%
Native citizen adults in New York State*	11.4%	7.8%	75.8%	4.1%	0.9%
ELDERLY (65 years and over)
Elderly immigrants
All immigrants combined	5.5%	45.8%	21.9%	5.2%	21.6%
Naturalized citizens	5.5%	37.4%	24.8%	4.5%	27.8%
Lawful permanent residents	6.7%	47.8%	20.5%	9.7%	15.4%
Refugees or asylees	2.5%	84.3%	10.6%	0.0%	2.7%
Other legal immigrants	x	x	x	x	x
Undocumented aliens	x	x	x	x	x
CHILDREN (0 - 17 years)
Children of immigrants by parents' status
All children in immigrant families	11.8%	28.3%	40.9%	4.9%	14.1%
Citizen children in immigrant families	8.3%	29.3%	44.0%	5.2%	13.2%
Noncitizen children in immigrant fams	27.8%	24.0%	26.4%	3.3%	18.5%
Citizen children in:
Naturalized families	x	x	x	x	x
LPR families	14.5%	35.7%	38.3%	6.5%	5.0%
Refugee families	x	x	x	x	x
Other alien families	x	x	x	x	x
Undocumented families	x	x	x	x	x
Noncitizen children in:
Naturalized families	x	x	x	x	x
LPR families	31.7%	31.1%	20.7%	3.9%	12.7%
Refugee families	13.0%	25.3%	55.7%	0.7%	5.4%
Other alien families	x	x	x	x	x
Undocumented families	x	x	x	x	x
Children of native citizens in New York State*	6.3%	17.2%	68.1%	3.2%	5.3%
* Comparison group data from the 1999 NSAF. All immigrant data from LANYCIS "X" denotes small sample size.

In both cities, the insurance profiles for immigrant adults were similar: about two-fifths had job-based insurance, two-fifths were uninsured, roughly one-tenth were on Medicaid, and the balance had other private or public insurance. Among the immigrant adults, undocumented aliens were the most likely to be uninsured (71 percent in Los Angeles; 80 percent in New York City) and naturalized citizens were the least likely (22 percent in Los Angeles; 21 percent in New York City). A small percentage of undocumented adults reported having Medicaid. (Although they are ineligible for full Medicaid coverage, they are eligible for emergency benefits.) Consistent with the exemptions under the law, refugees were more likely than LPRs to have Medicaid, but both large shares of both groups were uninsured.

The shares of native citizen adults without health insurance in New York State and California were about one third as high as the uninsured shares among immigrants in the two cities. The native-born were slightly less likely to receive Medicaid but much more likely to have job-based insurance than immigrant adults. Much of the difference in insurance status between immigrants and the native-born may be related to employment, income and other socioeconomic differences of the two groups. On the one hand, immigrants are more frequently employed in lower wage jobs that do not carry benefits such as health insurance. On the other hand, since immigrants are poorer on average than native citizens, they are more likely to receive Medicaid. After controlling for factors like income, education, and health status, however, an earlier study found that noncitizen immigrant adults were significantly less likely to have Medicaid than native citizen adults (Ku and Matani 2001).

A moderate fraction of elderly immigrants were uninsured: 10 percent in Los Angeles and 6 percent in New York City. Although these levels are quite low compared with non-elderly adults, they are substantially higher than the national share of all elders who are uninsured (1 percent, National Center for Health Statistics 1999). Uninsured shares were about the same for elderly noncitizens as for naturalized citizens in both cities. For elderly immigrants in the two cities, the most common source of insurance was Medicaid, which covered 39 percent of the elderly in Los Angeles and 46 percent in New York. About one fifth of the elderly carried job-based insurance (including insurance for retired workers or their dependents) and another one-fifth to one-quarter used Medicare.

Because these tables use an insurance hierarchy, however, they mask total participation in Medicare. When the hierarchy is removed, 75 percent of all elderly immigrants report getting Medicare, regardless of whether they also got another form of coverage (68 percent in Los Angeles and 79 percent in New York, not shown in the tables). By comparison, 96 percent of all seniors in the United States get Medicare (National Center for Health Statistics 1999).

While Medicare is the bulwark of insurance for almost all elderly Americans, many elderly immigrants do not receive it because they (or their spouses) did not work long enough in covered employment in the United States to be eligible. Those with too few years of Medicare-covered employment may purchase coverage, for up to $300 per month for hospital insurance and $50 per month for other medical insurance, but such expenditures may be beyond the reach of many elderly immigrants.⁽³⁰⁾ In a similar fashion, many elderly do not get Social Security payments because they did not work in the United States long enough. Due to these Medicare eligibility requirements, immigrant elders rely relatively more heavily on Medicaid coverage than do native-born citizens.

These findings are similar to those of Friedland and Pankaj (1997), who have reported that, nationally, 74 percent of elderly immigrants had Medicare in 1993, compared to 97 percent of elderly citizens. They also noted that Medicaid was relatively more important for immigrants, covering 64 percent of them (48 percent on both programs and 16 percent on Medicaid alone), while 12 percent of elderly citizens used Medicaid (11 percent on both programs and 1 percent on Medicaid alone). They found that elderly immigrants who had arrived between the ages of 41 and 64 were twice as likely to be on Medicare as those who entered after age 65. While the almost-universal nature of Medicare coverage has come close to eliminating uninsurance as a problem for elderly citizens, there are noticeable gaps in the Medicare coverage for noncitizens. These authors also noted that the PRWORA-related changes in the eligibility of elderly legal immigrants for Supplemental Security Income will lead to a loss of Medicaid coverage, which could exacerbate the uninsurance among elderly immigrants.

For children, the survey illustrates that there were sizeable differences in the insurance patterns in Los Angeles and New York. Almost one-quarter of the children of immigrants were uninsured in Los Angeles, with 40 percent uninsurance among noncitizen children but only 22 percent among citizen children with immigrant parents.

Shares of children without health insurance were consistently lower in New York City: 12 percent overall, with 28 percent for noncitizen children and 8 percent for citizen children in immigrant families. A key reason for the difference is that more immigrant children were on SCHIP in New York City (14 percent) than in Los Angeles (6 percent). Both New York State and California let legal immigrant children participate in their SCHIP programs, but New York's program has been operating for much longer and has about twice the caseload (Ellis and Smith 2000). Immigrant children were also more likely to have insurance provided through their parents' employers in New York than were those in Los Angeles.

The data show that noncitizen children with LPR parents were more likely to be uninsured (55 percent in Los Angeles and 32 percent in New York City) than citizen children in LPR families (22 percent in Los Angeles and 15 percent in New York City). These rates were much higher than the uninsurance rates of native citizen children in the two states (6 percent in each). Ku and Matani (2001) found that, after controlling for factors like income, education, race/ethnicity, and health status, both noncitizen and citizen children in immigrant families were more likely to be uninsured and less likely to have Medicaid or job-based insurance than children in citizen families.

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Conclusions

LANYCIS data indicate that many immigrants, particularly those who are not citizens, now face challenging economic circumstances. Using a broad array of measures (income, food security, housing affordability, and health insurance coverage), members of immigrant families tend to face greater difficulties compared to native citizen families, despite comparable or higher rates of labor force attachment. The data show that immigrants typically fare worse on these measures, even when only low-income families are considered. Naturalized citizens generally fare better than noncitizen immigrants, but still not as well as the native-born. About one-third of the members of immigrant families are native citizens, mostly the U.S.-born children of immigrants. Thus the difficulties faced by immigrant families affect many native as well as foreign-born children.

Since the data in this report were collected in 1999 and 2000, they report the circumstances of immigrants in the post-welfare reform era. The data are, however, primarily descriptive and are not longitudinal; thus our analyses should not be interpreted as measuring causal effects of welfare reform on immigrants. Other reports, however, have presented trend data showing that noncitizens' use of public benefits fell in the period after welfare reform and that citizen children in immigrant families also lost coverage (Zimmermann and Fix 1998; Brown, Wyn, and Ojeda 1999; Fix and Passel 1999; Food and Nutrition Service 2000; Ku and Blaney 2000; Fix and Passel 2002).

The data in this survey do not permit a comparison of the lives of immigrants here and in their home countries. It is reasonable to believe that many families fare better in the United States, although it also likely that at least a few fare worse. But community expectations, differences in standards of living, and the length of time immigrants have resided in the United States make such comparisons difficult. The current body of knowledge indicates that most immigrants come here to improve their lives by gaining better economic opportunities, to flee persecution, or to rejoin members of their families — not to obtain public benefits (Reimers 1992; Portes and Rumbaut 1996). For example, a recent survey of undocumented aliens found that less than one percent said they came to the United States for social services or related benefits (Berk et al. 2000).

Nonetheless, our analyses of immigrant families in Los Angeles and New York City reveal disparities between immigrants' apparent needs (e.g., poverty, food and housing insecurity, and insurance coverage) and their use of public benefits. When low-income immigrant and native citizen families are compared, immigrants tend to exhibit higher levels of need but lower use of government assistance in the form of Medicaid, food stamps, and so on. There are many possible reasons for these disparities, including eligibility restrictions imposed by the 1996 legislation, immigrants' fears about possible adverse consequences of using benefits, language barriers, and cultural differences.

A notable finding of the survey is that a large fraction of immigrants, including low-income noncitizens, believe that using public benefits like Medicaid or food stamps might harm them, particularly by endangering their immigration status. Program administrators and community leaders need to consider how they might reassure the immigrant community and decrease their wariness about benefits use.

Another important finding, however, is that immigrants' fears and misperceptions have a limited impact on their program use. The survey shows only a modest relationship between misunderstandings of eligibility rules and participation in Medicaid. There is no evidence that these misunderstandings deter FSP participation. Respondents living in families receiving food stamps were no more or less likely than those in families not receiving food stamps to believe that their children were ineligible for benefits or that welfare receipt would prevent them from becoming citizens. Analysis of in-depth follow-up surveys suggests that immigrants are reluctant to use benefit programs, but will do so when their need is great enough. Thus there is strong evidence that fears and misperceptions persist in immigrant communities, but the relationship between these fears and participation in means-tested benefits programs needs further research.

The survey also reveals that immigrants who arrived after August 1996 are poorer than those who arrived earlier. This finding is consistent with previous research indicating that it takes time for many immigrants to adjust to life in the United States, to develop their job skills, and to get good jobs. Current federal policy has divergent rules about benefits eligibility, depending on when an immigrant enters the country and whether or not he or she is a refugee. For example, refugees, who have extremely high levels of poverty, may obtain benefits like food stamps and Medicaid during their first several years in the United States. On the other hand, legal permanent residents also experience greater poverty during their first few years in the country, but they are generally barred from eligibility under federal rules. While LPRs mostly enter the country under the auspices of sponsors who should theoretically support them, there is a paucity of research about the provision of assistance to immigrants by their sponsors. Given the divergence between new policies regarding sponsorship and the relatively high poverty rates we have observed among the newest arrivals, it seems paradoxical that means-tested benefits are denied during the period when immigrants appear to face the most difficult economic circumstances.

Other research has pointed out some of the coping strategies used by low-income immigrants. For example, since they are highly uninsured, immigrants tend to rely on safety net health care providers, such as public and charity clinics and hospitals. But they may also delay getting medical attention, go without needed care, or turn to underground providers who potentially offer poorer quality care (Feld and Power 2000; Maloy et al. 2000; Ku and Freilich 2001).

The research detailed in this report concentrates on one element of the process of immigrants' adjustment: their need for and use of public benefits. While they may provide support for work and important assistance during times of economic crisis, programs such as food stamps, TANF, SSI, Medicaid, or SCHIP cannot serve as cure-alls. To succeed on a longer-term basis in the United States, low-income immigrants also need more education, better language capabilities, and stronger job skills. But it might be more difficult for immigrants to develop these capacities and to make the necessary human capital investments if they have difficulty meeting basic daily needs for food, housing, or medical care. These survey data, collected just a few years after the implementation of the new welfare policies, cannot provide a long-term assessment of the implications for immigrants, but they do indicate that — a few years after welfare reform — many immigrants face a range of difficulties and challenges in meeting their basic needs.

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Endnotes

2.  Los Angeles County encompasses a number of cities, including Los Angeles City, Glendale, Inglewood, Long Beach, Pico Rivera, Pomona, the San Fernando Valley and Santa Monica. The five boroughs of New York City are Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island.

3.  Both Los Angeles and New York City are important entry points for immigrants, who often migrate to other areas of the country. Thus, the immigrants in these areas may have entered more recently than, say, immigrants in the midwest or deep south areas of the United States and might have a different set of experiences. Moreover, the nationalities of immigrants vary across the nation, e.g., the large proportion of Cubans in Florida, which also affects many components of their social and economic status.

4.  In 1997, SSI eligibility was restored to immigrants who were already on SSI before August 1996 or who were in the United States on that date and subsequently became disabled. In addition, Amerasians and Cuban-Haitian entrants were to be considered similar to refugees, so that they would also be given a grace period for benefits. In 1998, food stamp eligibility was restored to children, some elderly people, and disabled immigrants who were living in the United States before August 1996. American Indians born in Mexico or Canada and Hmong immigrants were also accorded a grace period.

5.  Some immigrants, such as refugees, diversity immigrants and most immigrants admitted under employment preferences, do not have sponsors, so these rules do not apply to those groups.

6.  In 2001, the poverty line for a family of three is $14,630. In 1998, it was $13,650.

7.  Legal challenges and court decisions kept most provisions of Proposition 187 from being implemented. In 1999, Governor Davis ceased efforts to implement the final provisions.

8.  A 1997 review of 46 RDD surveys concluded that "response rates in RDD surveys over 70 percent are the exception and not the rule." The average response rate for the 46 surveys was 62 percent, and only one-sixth of the surveys had response rates above 70 percent (Massey et. al. 1997).

9.  If a person who spoke another language was contacted, the interviewers attempted to conduct the survey in one of the languages available (generally English). In a few cases, it was not possible to conduct an interview in any of the languages.

10.  We exclude from this definition the small number of native citizens born abroad, who are considered native-born citizens because their parents were citizens when they were born and because they have elected to retain American citizenship.

11.  The respondent decides whether to report someone as being his or her nonmarital partner.

12.  In this report, "children" means less than 18 years old; offspring who were 18 or older were categorized as adults.

13.  When there were two parents with different status, we assigned status using a hierarchy in which being undocumented was the highest priority and being a native citizen was the lowest. That is, if one parent was an LPR and the other was undocumented, we classified the family as "undocumented." We designed the hierarchy in this order to best capture mixed-status families in which at least one parent is ineligible for benefits due to immigration status.

14.  Because of the small sample sizes, in the remaining tables we do not include data based on groups or categories for which there are fewer than 50 unweighted observations, as shown in Table 1.1. (In some tables, the unit of analysis is the family, with a different count of unweighted observations.) This is to reduce the risk of drawing inferences from samples that are too small to be statistically reliable.

15.  In subsequent reports, we may be able to refine these estimates somewhat by seeing whether recipients were eligible under federal rules.

16.  The Urban Institute has defined "low-income" as income below 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

17.  Since NSAF II did not collect complete data on elderly households, we exclude households with no adult under the age of 65 from the LANYCIS data in Table 1.2.

18.  The survey data for TANF participation may be underestimated in New York in both NSAF II and LANYCIS. Comparisons of administrative and survey data for NSAF show particular shortfalls in TANF participation. The reason is not clear.

19.  The primary factor driving the increase in naturalization applications was a record number of legal permanent resident admissions in the early 1990s, due in part to the legalization of 2.7 million undocumented immigrants under the amnesty provisions of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). Legal immigrants are eligible to naturalize five years after their admission to permanent residence. In fact by 1999, naturalization applications fell to 760,000 because most of the IRCA amnesty population had already naturalized. Thus, restrictions on noncitizen eligibility for public benefits explain only a fraction of the rise in naturalization applications. See generally, Fix and Passel 2002.

20.  A related possibility is that we may have incorrectly imputed either immigration status or Medicaid participation. As described in Appendix 2, we imputed some data in these areas and may have erred in a few cases.

21.  To ascertain the periods of participation, respondents were asked if anyone in their family received food stamps any time in 1996-97, any time in 1998 or after, and at the time of the interview. Thus, someone who answered 'yes' to the first question, but 'no' to the second two, would be counted as having lost food stamps by 1998. See Appendix 4 for details.

22.  A few respondents reported that their food stamp allotments were reduced, but could not say when this happened. To be conservative, we present this as a benefit reduction between 1998 and the interview date, but it seems likely that in some cases it happened earlier.

23.  The proportion of the sample who are immigrants arriving after 1996, for all ages, is 8 percent in Los Angeles and 11 percent in New York City.

24.  These are measures of total gross income, before taxes and including welfare, SSI, or other cash transfer payments. See Appendix 2 for more discussion about editing income data.

25.  Comparable or higher poverty rates among post-enactment immigrants exist despite the new statutory provisions that sought to limit the entry of post-enactment low-income immigrants into the country.

26.  A small portion of the difference in income levels of pre- and post-enactment immigrants might be their eligibility for cash assistance programs like TANF or SSI. Since participation rates in these programs are relatively low, however, this is a minor component of the income differential.

27.  The respondent was usually a parent but sometimes the spouse or partner of a parent.

28.  See Shetterly et al. (1996). An alternative way to assess health status might be to measure the prevalence of diagnosed chronic illnesses or disabilities (Hogan, et al. 1997). But this might be biased in the opposite direction: if immigrants have less access to health services, they are probably less likely to be diagnosed with illnesses, regardless of their actual clinical status.

29.  LANYCIS asked about health insurance at the time of the survey, while the CPS asked whether people had insurance at any time during the prior year. When a LANYCIS respondent reported that a family member had more than one type of insurance, the type of insurance was assigned by a hierarchy with Medicaid at the top. For example, people with job-based insurance and Medicaid as well as people with both Medicare and Medicaid were classified as having Medicaid. This hierarchy was designed to best capture the share of the sample receiving Medicaid, one of the benefits affected by the immigrant eligibility restrictions in welfare reform.

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