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Immigrants and TANF

A Look at Immigrant Welfare Recipients in Three Cities

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Document date: October 20, 2003
Released online: October 20, 2003

Assessing the New Federalism Occasional Paper No. 69

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).


About the Series

Assessing the New Federalism is a multiyear Urban Institute project designed to analyze the devolution of responsibility for social programs from the federal government to the states, focusing primarily on health care, income security, employment and training programs, and social services. Researchers monitor program changes and fiscal developments. In collaboration with Child Trends, the project studies changes in family well-being. The project aims to provide timely, nonpartisan information to inform public debate and to help state and local decisionmakers carry out their new responsibilities more effectively.

Key components of the project include a household survey, studies of policies in 13 states, and a database with information on all states and the District of Columbia, available at the Urban Institute's web site. This paper is one in a series of occasional papers analyzing information from these and other sources.


Contents

The 1996 Federal Welfare Reform Law
Immigrant Bars
Reforms to Welfare Programs
TANF Reauthorization

Growing Immigration, Declining Use of Welfare
Rising Numbers of Immigrants
Mixed-Status Families
Increasing Limited English Proficiency
Declining Rates of Welfare Use among Immigrants
Immigrants a Significant Share of Total Welfare Caseload
Immigrants More Likely to Remain on Welfare
Immigrants More Likely to Be in Two-Parent Families

A Job, A Better Job? Employment, Mobility, and Supportive Services
Barriers to Employment
Employment Patterns among TANF Recipients
Providing Supportive Services

Access to Language Instruction, Job Training, and Employment Services
The Work-First Norm and Getting a Job without English
Defining Acceptable Work Activities
Meeting Work Participation Requirements
Few Training Programs Offered in Languages other than English
Assessing English Language Proficiency

Conclusions and Implications for Reform

Notes

References

About the Authors


The federal welfare reform act of 1996 (the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, or PRWORA) dramatically revamped the welfare system, turning it into a block grant program run by the states, imposing new, stricter work requirements and setting a five-year lifetime limit on benefit receipt. For immigrants the law did all that and much more. In a major departure from previous policy, the law sharply curtailed noncitizens' eligibility for welfare and other major federal benefits.

While numerous studies have assessed PRWORA's immigrant restrictions and their effects on immigrant families, little research has examined the impacts of welfare program reforms on immigrants remaining on welfare, now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).1 At the same time, a large body of research has emerged on the impacts of new work requirements and time limits on welfare recipients, but little of this research has specifically examined how immigrants fare.

As Congress prepares to reauthorize TANF, this report offers some insights into how well the welfare system works for this frequently overlooked population. The report focuses on the experiences of immigrants and those who are limited English proficient (LEP) on TANF in three major U.S. cities: Houston, Los Angeles, and New York City. One-quarter of the country's immigrants call these three cities home. Over half of the foreign-born population lives in Texas, California, and New York.

This paper examines immigrant participation in welfare, employment patterns and barriers among immigrant welfare recipients, and opportunities for and limits to enrollment in English as a Second Language (ESL) and other training programs while on the welfare rolls. We conclude by highlighting key immigrant-related issues for TANF's reform and pointing out potential strategies to help immigrants and LEPs on welfare find and keep jobs.

This research stems from a series of interviews conducted with public officials, employment service providers, welfare office workers, immigrant and refugee service providers, advocates, and others in these cities.2 The study also draws on case studies conducted by the Urban Institute as part of the Assessing the New Federalism project. In addition, we use Current Population Survey (CPS) data and 2000 Census data to examine the characteristics of the immigrant and TANF populations.

Our key findings include the following:

  • Despite declining use of welfare nationally, immigrants and limited English speakers still make up a significant share of those on the welfare rolls. Immigrants compose around one-third of the TANF caseload in California and New York and nearly one-fifth in Texas.
  • Many immigrants remaining on the rolls have significant barriers to work, including lower education levels and less work history than natives.
  • Immigrants on TANF are less likely to be working than natives and more likely to be working in occupations that provide little opportunity for speaking English, gaining skills, and achieving self-sufficiency.
  • PRWORA's strict work requirements limited opportunities for states to provide education and training to welfare recipients, including language training to limited English speakers. In addition, the work-first norm embodied in welfare reform and embraced by the states meant that states did not use the opportunities that remained available to provide language and other training programs.
  • Many job-training programs have English language requirements, which limit access for immigrants who do not speak English well.
  • Proposed TANF reforms increasing the number of required hours of work and limiting the types of activities that count as work will make it even more difficult for immigrant and limited-English-speaking welfare recipients to receive language or vocational training.
  • Combining an emphasis on employment with opportunities for developing skills—a strategy supported by recent research on all welfare recipients—could be an especially effective model for limited English speakers, who could combine part-time work with language training. Proposed increases to work participation requirements would make it more difficult for states to pursue these types of strategies.

This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).


1. See, for example, George J. Borjas, Welfare Reform and Immigration (Cambridge: Harvard University, 2000); Randy Capps et al., "How Are Immigrants Faring after Welfare Reform? Preliminary Evidence from Los Angeles and New York City" (Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute, 2002); Audrey Singer and Greta Gilbertson, Naturalization in the Wake of Anti-Immigrant Legislation: Dominicans in New York City (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2000); and Wendy Zimmermann and Karen C. Tumlin, Patchwork Policies: State Assistance for Immigrants under Welfare Reform (Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute, 1999). A few national and local studies provide some important exceptions. See especially Shawn Fremstad, "Immigrants, Persons with Limited Proficiency in English and the TANF Program: What Do We Know?" (Washington, D.C.: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2003). TANF is the federal welfare program that replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) in 1996.

2. In New York City we had limited access to city welfare workers. In LA County and Houston we interviewed welfare program administrators for the cash and work components of TANF programs, but similar interviews in New York were not granted. As a result, information for New York relies heavily on reports from service providers, advocates, and legal aid lawyers. This information was supplemented with an extensive review of available city documents and other reports on welfare in New York.

Acknowledgments

This report is part of the Urban Institute's Assessing the New Federalism project, a multiyear effort to monitor and assess the devolution of social programs from the federal to the state and local levels. Alan Weil is the project director. The project analyzes changes in income support, social services, and health programs. In collaboration with Child Trends, the project studies child and family well-being.

The research for this report was funded primarily by the Urban Institute's Assessing the New Federalism project. A portion of the fieldwork for the study was funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) and a consortium of other federal agencies as part of the project entitled, "Welfare reform, the economic and health status of immigrants and the organizations that serve them."

The Assessing the New Federalism project is currently supported by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The Ford Foundation.

The authors would like to thank the scores of state and local officials, welfare office workers, advocates, and researchers who met with them during their field visits to Houston, Los Angeles, and New York City. The authors are grateful for the excellent research assistance of Laureen Laglagaron, Christian Henrichson, Jason Ost, Scott McNiven, and Kenneth Sucher, for Phuong Tran's help with the site work, and for Jeff Passel's indispensable analytic assistance and insights. Very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this report were provided by Michael Fix, Pamela Holcomb, Audrey Singer, Eugene Smolensky, Alan Weil, and Shawn Fremstad.



Topics/Tags: | Governing | Immigrants | Poverty, Assets and Safety Net


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