A report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) found that homes led by illegal immigrants with “anchor babies” are more likely to use welfare than homes led by U.S. citizens.
“Anchor babies” are children born in the United States to illegal immigrants and have birthright citizenship.
According to the report, 59% of “non-citizen households” use at least one major welfare program, compared to 39% of U.S.-born households.
“Our best estimate is that 59 percent of households headed by illegal immigrants, also called the undocumented, use at least one major program,” the report states. “We have no evidence this is due to fraud. Among legal immigrants we estimate the rate is 52 percent.”
Thirty-six percent of immigrant households use food programs, 37% use Medicaid, and 16% use Earned Income Tax Credit.
“No one program explains the higher overall use of welfare by immigrants. For example, excluding the extensively used but less budgetary costly school lunch/breakfast program, along with the WIC nutrition program, still shows 46 percent of all immigrant households and 33 percent of U.S.-born households use at least one of the remaining programs,” the report notes, referring to welfare programs used by U.S.-born children and illegal immigrant children.
In a section discussing why illegal immigrant welfare is high, the report explains that “more than half of all illegal immigrant households have one or more U.S.-born children.”
“[A] dozen states offer Medicaid to all low-income children regardless of immigration status and even more states provide it to all low-income pregnant women, again without regard to legal status. A few states go beyond this and offer Medicaid to other adult illegal immigrants,” CIS continued, adding that “prior research indicates that the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants have no education beyond high school and, as a result, a very large share of illegal immigrants have incomes low enough to qualify for welfare.”
“It seems fair to say based on this data that a very large share of immigrants come to America, have children, struggle to provide for them, and so turn to taxpayers for support. This can be seen as especially problematic given that there is already a large number of Americans who are also struggling to provide for their children,” CIS adds.
American Faith reported that some Democratic-run states register welfare recipients to vote, regardless of their legal status.
A report from journalist John Fund, issued by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, documents the Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) policy now imposed by 23 states and the District of Columbia.
In his report, Fund says how states with AVR get residents on voter rolls when people sign up for state agencies.
“[AVR] also would register people using information in various existing state and federal government databases, which predictably will lead to the registration of large numbers of ineligible individuals such as aliens and felons, as well as multiple or duplicate registrations of the same individual, both in the same and different states,” Fund said.
“In 2017, Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe of Virginia vetoed a measure mandating investigations of elections in which ballots outnumbered eligible voters,” the report continued.
