Immigrant Victims of Abuse Are Illegally Denied Benefits, Suit Says

Newspaper article

By: Nina Bernstein

Date: December 13, 2005

Source: Bernstein, Nina. "Immigrant Victims of Abuse are Illegally Denied Benefits, Suit Says." The New York Times (December 13, 2005).

About the Author: A reporter for the New York Times, Nina Bernstein received the George Polk Award for distinguished metropolitan coverage in 1995. She is also the author of The Lost Children of Winter (2002), an investigative account of the consequences of New York City's child welfare system.

INTRODUCTION

The news article reports on a 2005 legal case being brought against government departments by immigrant women who were victims of domestic violence and were being denied welfare benefits by administrative systems that were failing to acknowledge their eligibility. Although immigrant victims of domestic violence often face particularly serious consequences of being denied benefits, this case also reflects the wider problems of poverty and hardship faced by immigrants who are deemed to be ineligible for welfare, or who fail to claim the benefits to which they are actually entitled.

Many immigrant women who experience violence fail to even report their problems to the authorities and to seek assistance to support themselves and their children without having to depend on an abusive husband. This is sometimes because they are "undocumented" (illegal) immigrants or are uncertain of their immigration status and therefore fear repercussions from the immigration authorities. Others may avoid approaching the authorities because they cannot speak English well, or simply because they are unaware of the support and assistance that may be available to them.

Until the mid-1990s, most legal immigrants were eligible for welfare benefits in the United States on the same terms as U.S. citizens. With rising levels of legal and undocumented migration to the United States, however, the government decided to restrict eligibility to welfare in order to tackle immigrant abuse of the welfare system, deter potential migrants who were attracted by the welfare system, and reduce social security costs. Under the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, immigrants who arrived in the United States after August that year were banned from claiming benefits until they had lived in the United States for at least five years. The Act also transferred much of the responsibility for implementing welfare policies to local and state governments and introduced an element of discretion in terms of the criteria under which exceptions could be made for certain vulnerable groups, including victims of domestic violence. In practice this meant that states could deny welfare benefits to all non-citizens, with the exception of emergency Medicaid. Following widespread opposition to the 1996 Act, particularly by immigrant support groups, various amendments were introduced that did allow the granting of benefits to particular groups of non-citizens, but this resulted in considerable confusion about the rules, as well as administrative problems such as those reported in this news article, which led to many claims being erroneously rejected.

The overall impact of the legislation was a major decline among immigrants in the utilization of welfare programs such as Medicaid, Food Stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Participation in such programs fell not only among those who were ineligible under the new rules, but among those who were entitled to the benefits, such as refugees and families with children that were U.S. citizens. Factors contributing to the decline in participation among these groups were likely to have included confusion about the eligibility rules, fear of reprisals from the immigration authorities if the household included illegal immigrants, insufficient information being made available to immigrant communities, and poor training of welfare office staff to recognize eligibility for assistance.

PRIMARY SOURCE

Hundreds of battered immigrant women and children are being illegally denied food stamps and other aid because of programming errors in New York welfare computers and faulty staff training, according to legal papers that poverty lawyers plan to file in federal court today.

The lawsuit is a last resort, the lawyers said, because city and state officials have failed to fix systemic problems that force many women to choose between staying safe and feeding their families, despite government policies aimed at supporting them until they can get on their feet.

At its most basic level, the problem lies in the pulldown computer menu that caseworkers use when they enter information about a noncitizen applying for aid. The list of eligible immigration categories mistakenly omits "battered qualified alien," the category in which these women and children fit. So workers systematically reject them, with faulty state training manuals compounding the problem, the lawyers said.

"We have clients who have chosen to return to the abuser rather than not have food for their children," said Elizabeth S. Saylor, a lawyer with the Domestic Violence Project of the Legal Aid Society, one of the groups bringing the lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan as a class action. "People try to escape, but what's worse for the children, to see their mom get abused, or to be in the shelter and go hungry?"

Bob McHugh, a spokesman for the city's Human Resources Administration, defended the agency. "We have worked every day, including with groups like Legal Aid, to make our delivery of service even better," he said. "They've chosen to litigate this matter, so let them have their day in court."

Officials at the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance and the state Department of Health, also named as defendants, said they could not comment before reviewing the papers.

The papers describe the dark side of a common immigration story. Many of the women had come with children to join a husband in New York after years of separation, when their visas came through. But the reunions turned ugly, often after the woman had become pregnant again.

The abuse, documented in orders of protection, police reports and letters from domestic violence shelters, is not in question.

More than a dozen plaintiffs, mostly identified only by initials, include a woman from Senegal helping to prosecute the man accused of torturing her and murdering her sister; a Mexican mother of three whose abusive husband tracked her from Texas to New York; and a Bangladeshi woman whose husband, since hospitalized for mental illness, repeatedly kicked her in the stomach while she was pregnant, then cut up her clothes and threatened to kill her when she tried to go to work after the birth of their second daughter.

Last year the Bangladeshi woman fled to a domestic violence shelter with her daughters, now 6 and 2. But when she applied for public benefits at a city Job Center, showing visas, work authorization cards, and proof of abuse, caseworkers wrongly told her that only the baby, a citizen, was eligible for aid, the papers say.

It took several efforts and a letter from a lawyer at the shelter to persuade officials that she and her 6-year-old were also eligible for help. Even then, supervisors could not figure out how to get around the computer system, the papers said, so it has repeatedly rejected the case for "errors."

Affidavits by lawyers who have handled scores of such cases depicted advocacy on behalf of individuals as a Kafkaesque cul de sac. Even though administrative "fair hearings" overrule denials, the decisions are worded too vaguely to overcome the conventional wisdom reinforced by the computer screen. A few times, workers managed to get around the system by filling in false information, but aid was soon cut off again, because the recipient's immigration documents did not match what had been entered in the computer.

In part, the situation reflects the complexities created when Congress restricted many federal benefits to newcomers in the 1996 welfare overhaul, then added a patchwork of exceptions. State programs filled other gaps.

"It's a nightmare," said a dressmaker from Jamaica who joined her husband legally with their two children last year, and fled with them to a homeless shelter when she was eight-and-a-half-months pregnant. Her abusive husband, she said, had threatened to feed rat poison to the children, who are 7 and 9.

A caseworker denied her and the older children food stamps, cash assistance and Medicaid because they had no Social Security numbers to satisfy one of the computer prompts. They are now subsisting on school lunches and her newborn's allotment of aid: $68.50 every two weeks, and $119 a month in food stamps.

In an affidavit, she wrote: "Although I am breastfeeding, I regularly do not eat enough because we do not have enough money. Because I am hungry, I oftentimes feel weak and suffer headaches. I have watched myself and my children lose weight and feel helpless to reverse it."

Friday evening, as the baby slept in the crowded lobby of the homeless shelter, the children reminisced about what they used to eat in Jamaica.

"Sometimes we had chicken and rice," the boy said.

"And we had dumplings," the girl remembered.

"Salt fish!" the boy added, eyeing the chips in the vending machines.

Asked if he wanted to go back to Jamaica, he fell silent. "I want to stay with my mommy," he whispered.

SIGNIFICANCE

A relatively high percentage of immigrant households live in poverty in the United States. It has been reported that twenty-one percent of all children with immigrant parents live below the official poverty line, compared with only fourteen percent of the children of U.S.-born parents. Policies that restrict the access of immigrants to welfare benefits or deter them from claiming benefits and delivery systems that erroneously reject their claims, may exacerbate the problems of poverty among immigrants in the United States. Children from poor households tend to experience lower levels of educational attainment, making it more difficult to escape their disadvantaged backgrounds later in life.

For victims of domestic abuse, receipt of welfare benefits has traditionally been a means of escaping an abusive domestic situation. Denying welfare benefits to battered immigrant women and their children may increase the overall incidence of domestic violence in the immigrant community, as many may be forced to stay in abusive relationships. At the same time, tight immigration laws may exacerbate the situation, if the women are forced to rely on their husband's citizenship or immigration status in order to secure their own legal residency.

In 2006, changes were introduced to the Medicaid system, requiring claimants to prove their U.S. citizenship. Although intended to tackle benefit fraud by undocumented immigrants, the experience of the 1996 welfare reform implementation suggests immigrants who are actually eligible may lose their benefits in practice unless steps are taken to improve delivery systems and increase awareness of entitlement among immigrants.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Book

Kretsedemas, Philip, and Ann Aparicio, eds. Immigrants, Welfare Reform, and the Poverty of Policy. New York: Praeger Publishers, 2004.

Periodicals

Chanley, Sharon A., and Nicholas O. Alozie. "Policy for the 'Deserving,' but Politically Weak: The 1996 Welfare Reform Act and Battered Women." Policy Studies Review 18 (2) (Summer 2001): 1-26.

Shields, Margie K., and Richard E. Behrman. "Children of Immigrant Families: Analysis and Recommendations." The Future of Children 14 (2) (Summer 2004).

Thrupkaew, Noy. "No Huddled Masses Need Apply." The American Prospect 13 (13) (July 15, 2002).