NRO

Mark Krikorian

September 2, 2015

A new report by my colleague Steven Camarota finds that most immigrant households use welfare. That immigrants receive taxpayer-funded benefits at higher rates than the native-born isn’t a new finding. But previous research (including by CIS) has never found such a high rate. The reason is that Camarota used a different Census Bureau data source, the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), that is more difficult to use but, as its name suggests, provides the most comprehensive view of welfare use (a.k.a “program participation”). The study shows that 51 percent of immigrant-headed households use at least one welfare program, as opposed to 30 percent for households headed by the native-born. The study examined Medicaid, cash assistance, food aid, and housing programs. The graph below shows overall welfare use for immigrant and native households…

Read more and see the graph at: NRO