Welfare Overhaul Gets Mixed Reviews

It could be better, but it could certainly be a lot worse.

That is the consensus of Los Angeles County officials, immigrant advocates and others monitoring how noncitizen residents fared in Gov. Pete Wilson’s sweeping welfare blueprint.

“The governor doesn’t do anything to make it worse for legal immigrants, but he also doesn’t do anything to mitigate the impact of the [federal] welfare bill on legal immigrants,” said Phil Ansell, welfare reform strategist for Los Angeles County.

For months, many had worried that the Wilson administration would attempt to impose further benefit restrictions on legal immigrants, already big losers in last year’s federal welfare overhaul. No jurisdiction in the nation is likely to feel the cuts more than Los Angeles, where more than a third of the estimated 9.4 million county residents were born abroad.

Wilson, however, decided against instituting several new options allowing states to deny an array of aid and services to legal immigrants. In one crucial decision, Wilson, in his budget plan unveiled this week, preserves full Medi-Cal and cash welfare benefits for eligible legal immigrants who were in the country as of last Aug. 22, the date the federal welfare act was signed into law.

As of last August, according to state statistics, about 635,000 legal immigrants living in California were covered by Medi-Cal, the public insurance plan for the poor; they represented about 11.5 % of the entire caseload. The 372,000 legal immigrants receiving cash welfare checks under the former Aid to Families With Dependent Children program accounted for about 14% of the state total.

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In L.A. County alone, the governor’s decision preserves the Medi-Cal eligibility of as many as 300,000 legal immigrants now on the rolls. The move averted a possible collapse of the fragile county public health infrastructure, which depends on a steady stream of federal and state revenue from the Medi-Cal program.

“It’s absolutely good news,” said Irene Riley, chief of governmental relations for the county Department of Health Services.

Not so heartening, from Riley’s perspective, is the fact that those arriving after Aug. 22 must look beyond the government, typically to their own resources or those of relatives, for health coverage and other assistance.

Last year’s welfare downsizing barred most newly arriving legal immigrants for a five-year period from the majority of federal aid programs. The Wilson administration has opted not to allocate state money to help them out during that time.

“What will happen is that many newly arriving legal immigrants won’t seek nonemergency care,” said Riley. “Some will get better, but some will get worse--and will end up in emergency rooms.”

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The new restrictions mean that about 40,000 new legal immigrants each year who previously would have been expected to apply for Medi-Cal will now be ineligible, said Ken August, a spokesman for the Department of Health Services.

The governor’s position, said spokeswoman Lisa Kalustian, is that immigrants’ “sponsors,” usually relatives, should be responsible for health and other costs for new arrivals who cannot afford to pay for themselves. Indeed, Congress last year explicitly made sponsors legally liable for government aid to new immigrants.

“What the federal law does is hold the sponsors to the promises they make,” said Kalustian.

The governor opted not to create a new safety net for two vulnerable state populations: about 243,000 elderly, disabled and blind legal immigrants receiving federal Supplemental Security Insurance, and 230,000 immigrant food stamp recipients. Both groups are expected to lose benefits by this summer, barring a congressional change of heart.

In formulating his decision, Kalustian said, the governor determined that replacing such a massive infusion of federal aid with state money would have been “prohibitively expensive.”

But advocates for the poor are hoping to persuade the Legislature to fund alternative aid sources to serve at least some of these needy immigrants.

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“I think it’s incumbent upon the state to make sure all Californians have enough to eat,” said Laurie True of California Food Policy Advocates, a San Francisco-based group that fights hunger.

Another concern troubling social activists is the governor’s plan to allow counties to discontinue general relief for indigent adults. Many activists see that aid as the only lifeline for legal immigrants newly denied other benefits.

Also on the legislative plate is an proposal to maintain home health care visits for about 12,000 legal immigrants statewide, mostly elderly, who stand to lose the aid as they are dropped from SSI rolls. Current state law links the home care to SSI enrollment. Many recipients will end up in nursing homes, subsidized by Medi-Cal if they are denied the visits from health care workers, advocates say.

The governor has not backed a proposal now circulating in the Assembly to “decouple” home care visit eligibility from the SSI program.

However, Wilson does intend to back legislation allowing about 200 illegal immigrant nursing home patients statewide--mostly elderly--to continue receiving Medi-Cal coverage until alternative arrangements can be made. “Just putting them out on the street is not something we want to be looking at here,” said Kalustian.

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The federal welfare law made illegal immigrants and many temporary legal residents ineligible for most state and locally funded benefits. Wilson has directed all departments to comply, repeating his oft-voiced contention that those residing here unlawfully should be denied the “magnet” of public benefits.

In a departure from that principle, though, the governor this week opted to allow illegal immigrants to continue receiving foodstuffs under the popular Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, which is 100% federally funded.

The federal welfare law granted states the right to bar illegal immigrants from the program, which provides nutritious food to impoverished women and children and is widely used in immigrant neighborhoods. After a review, Wilson decided not to turn away the federal money, even though some funds are going to illegal immigrants.