Q&A of the Day – How Illegal Immigrants End Up on Government Assistance
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Social: @brianmuddradio
iHeartRadio: Use the Talkback feature – the microphone button on our station’s page in the iHeart app.
Today’s Entry: Brian- love your work on the illegal immigration topic. It really has helped to hear you boil down the impact at the state and local level. My question is this. If Florida isn’t a sanctuary state and if it’s already illegal for illegals to be on government assistance – how is it happening?
Bottom Line: I’ve continued to hear regularly from listeners about the dissemination of illegal immigrant information I’ve covered over the past week as a slew of updated border and illegal immigrant information from the past year has been made available to study. Central to my coverage of the topic has been the updated look at Syracuse University’s Immigration tracker which revealed that entering 2024 there were a total of nearly 3.3 million pending asylum cases in the United States. That included 481,376 Florida’s pipeline. The next closest state was Texas with 458,000+ followed by California at 348,000+. A typical backlog of cases in Florida is under 20,000. That was eye opening for multiple reasons. First, that the Biden administration has been moving more asylum seekers, almost all of which are, in reality, illegal immigrants gaming the system (between 87%-97% historically) into Florida than any other state. And second, that the volume of largely future illegal immigrants moved into our state under the Biden administration is 24x the normal flow. Governor DeSantis is one of many politicians who’ve referred to the abuse of President Biden’s open border policies as “an invasion”. When you have the flow of 24x the illegal immigrants coming into your state I’d say that qualifies. And that’s the broader point here. It’s not just that our country is being invaded via the southern border. As it turns out, by the time the dust settles on border crossers processed by the Biden administration, Florida is being invaded more than any other state. This is why it made perfect sense for Governor DeSantis to send a battalion of Florida National Guard and State troops, to the southern border to assist Texas’ effort to do what the Biden administration won’t do in securing the border. In addressing today’s question about what’s happening with government assistance programs once they get here - I’ll reset with the startling number of illegal immigrants who end up on government assistance programs.
Based on data from the Center for Immigration Studies:
- 63 percent of households headed by a non-citizen use at least one welfare program
The programs being exploited run the gambit of welfare programs. Among them...
- Financial welfare
- Housing
- Medicaid
- SNAP
- WIC
- School lunch
According to the National Academies study of the fiscal impact of illegal immigrants – the average net lifetime financial impact of each illegal immigrant from the time they enter this country until the time the exit (be it be by deportation or death) is $68,000. That’s a figure that net of taxes paid by illegals. So, in answer to today’s question how is this happening? It’s different based on the type of government program but here’s an idea of what it looks like.
Programs with no immigration status restrictions:
- Community Development Block Grants is a federal program intended to strengthen communities by providing funds to improve housing, living environments, and economic opportunities, principally for people with low- and moderate-incomes.
- U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program Treasury’s Emergency Rental Assistance program to support housing stability
- Emergency Solutions Grants funds to states and to larger cities and counties to help people quickly regain stability in permanent housing after experiencing a housing crisis/and or homelessness. ESG funds street outreach, homelessness prevention and diversion, emergency shelter, and rapid re-housing..
- HOME Investment Partnership Program a federal block grant program that uses the funds to provide affordable housing to low- and moderate-income households.
- Rapid Unsheltered Survivor Housing Provides outreach, emergency shelter, rapid rehousing, and other assistance to people experiencing or at risk of experiencing homelessness who are in a disaster-affected area but who cannot access all services provided by FEMA programs.
- School lunch/food programs
Program with limited status restrictions:
- HUD’s government assisted housing Only one member of a household must hold legal status
Programs available to those seeking asylum status:
- Medicaid
- SNAP
This helps evidence the added benefit of being an “asylum seeker” in this country. Even if well over 90% of asylum seekers will eventually be found to be illegitimate, they get the benefit of the doubt with access to most assistance programs the federal government has a hand in. This is why, for example, even in a state like Florida where we don’t allow any direct access to assistance programs for illegal immigrants – so many are able to access them. Commonly once illegal immigrants/asylum seekers arrive in communities there are non-profits which commonly contract with the government that place these people in these programs to often house, feed and if applicable even educate them. This is why one of the most important aspects of immigration reform, as people debate what that should look like a la the current border bill debate, is comprehensive reformation of the U.S. asylum code. It’s a bad joke that provides the benefit of the doubt to asylum seekers, whom are almost exclusively illegal immigrants, at taxpayer expense.