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PRWORA's restrictions on legal immigrant eligibility required agencies to weave new eligibility provisions into an already complicated array of eligibility rules and verification procedures. When first implemented, the new non-citizen eligibility rules raised many questions about exactly how and to whom the new provisions should be applied, prompting considerable confusion among non-citizens and eligibility workers alike. It is beyond the scope of this study to assess the nature and magnitude of these early implementation issues. The study site visits do, however, provide an opportunity to observe how some welfare agencies and eligibility staff have dealt with the complexity of these rules after having had several years to incorporate them into daily operations. The visits also provided information about whether eligibility determination rules and verification procedures that are not specific to immigration status present an additional layer of complexity for non-citizen applicants.
This chapter first describes approaches public agencies use to determine non-citizen eligibility, including exemptions to the five-year bars on legal immigrant eligibility, and then considers other types of eligibility rules and verification practices which study respondents identified as particularly challenging for immigrant applicants.
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Across the sites, we found most eligibility workers are relatively well versed with general non-citizen eligibility rules. For instance, they are readily able to point out that citizen children in mixed status families are eligible for benefits; undocumented immigrants are ineligible; and legal immigrants are eligible except for those affected by the five-year bars and food stamp work requirements. Workers navigate the complexity of the immigrant eligibility rules primarily by relying on immigration documents in conjunction with charts that crosswalk program eligibility with these documents.
In most cases, workers can easily determine if a person is eligible — all else equal — by the type of document they provide on their current immigrant status. All sites except Seattle then verify applicants' immigration documents by submitting key information to INS through the Systematic Alien Verification Entitlement (SAVE) system electronically or via telephone.(1) Workers reported that SAVE generally responds to inquiries within a day or two and delays are rare.(2)
The advantage of the document-driven approach is that it is relatively simple and straightforward for workers to implement and works well for the majority of cases where non-citizens do in fact have common types of immigration documents. To be effective, however, it is also critical that agencies update immigrant eligibility/documentation charts to keep them accurate and that non-citizens present their most current documents so that they are not denied benefits incorrectly. Non-citizen eligibility rules continue to be most challenging and error-prone on the margins, in cases where the non-citizen applicant has a less common immigration status (for instance, an asylee), or where the applicant presents an uncommon document (e.g., a letter from INS stating she or he is an applicant for permanent residency).
Some agencies also rely on more experienced workers or specialized units to handle non-citizen eligibility (e.g., the immigrant and refugee offices in New York City and the refugee unit in Dallas) or have offices located in areas with large immigrant communities (e.g., the Seattle/Kent and Seattle/Rainier offices). Workers in these settings typically have more experience and familiarity with non-citizen eligibility rules and immigration documents. In contrast, dealing with immigrant eligibility rules may be more challenging for workers in areas of the country, such as Raleigh and Sedalia, where immigration is on the rise but non-citizen applications are still infrequent.
Welfare agency staff also noted that they have minimal to no interaction with INS on how to address applicants' questions and concerns about the potential impact of receiving TANF, FSP, Medicaid and SCHIP benefits on their immigration status and citizenship. Although these observations were made in all six study sites, such concerns appear to be more pronounced in the smaller study sites — Raleigh and Sedalia — where immigrant communities are newer, and agencies have less experience working with these issues.
Welfare agencies are increasingly turning to computer software to help guide workers and applicants through eligibility determination interviews. Such automation provides a means to further standardize the eligibility determination process, making it possible for all workers to systematically gather all the information needed to correctly apply eligibility rules, including the complex rules pertaining to non-citizen eligibility. For example, the computer programs used by welfare agencies in Seattle and Dallas prompt workers to enter on screen almost all of the information needed to determination eligibility and benefit levels accurately. Arlington also has such an automated system, although at the time of our visit it was used only for benefit issuance — not in the "interactive mode" for eligibility interviews for which it was designed — due to technical problems. New York City was nearing the point of phasing in a similar system, and Missouri had one in the relatively early stages of development.
Although using automated programs to guide the eligibility determination interview process offers many advantages, it is not a panacea. In order to be effective, the software must be well-designed with correctly sequenced questions that capture all the information needed, and welfare agency staff must enter the information correctly — both challenging demands in their own right. Even with the assistance of automated eligibility interview packages, eligibility staff must still recognize which immigration documents are acceptable. Optimally, strategies to address the implementation complexities presented by the non-citizen eligibility rules — and all eligibility determination rules for that matter — involve the use of highly trained and specialized workers in conjunction with automated systems that prompt for all the information that is required.
Even though most eligibility workers we spoke to have become familiar with general procedures for determining non-citizen eligibility, they still noted that the complexity of PRWORA's eligibility rules sometimes makes carrying out eligibility determination challenging, especially in cases when non-citizen applicants present unusual documents or when eligibility rules have undergone recent changes. The legislation includes differing eligibility rules for different programs, along with exemptions for certain classes of immigrants. A five-year period of ineligibility applies to all legal immigrants entering after August 1996 for TANF, Medicaid and SCHIP, as well as to children for food stamps. Legal immigrant adults must show they worked at least 10 years, or 40 quarters, to receive food stamps, regardless of their date of entry.(3) PRWORA also includes exemptions from these eligibility rules for refugees, asylees and similar classes of legal immigrants, as well as for active duty military, veterans and spouses of active duty military and veterans.(4)
In jurisdictions such as Seattle and Sedalia that offer state substitute programs for those ineligible from federally-funded benefits, the correct application of the exemptions is primarily an accounting issue (i.e., it affects whether the state or federal government pays for benefits). However, in locations where there are limited substitute programs or no such programs at all (e.g., Arlington, Raleigh, Dallas), the consequence of failing to apply exemptions correctly has important ramifications for non-citizens, since their ability to access benefits depends upon the correct application of the bars.
Exemptions for Refugees, Asylees and Similar Classes of Legal Immigrants. The most commonly applied exemption to the bar on non-citizen eligibility for public benefits is for refugees and similar groups of legal immigrants. For immigration status documentation purposes, the I-94 form provided by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) generally identifies recently resettled refugees. Eligibility workers in all six sites appeared to be very familiar with this form of identification. In addition, many staff noted that refugees are more likely than other non-citizen applicants to come prepared with immigration and other required documents because they typically receive application assistance from resettlement agencies or other support networks. Correctly identifying and applying the refugee exemption based on I-94 forms appears to be a relatively standardized and streamlined process, at least in the six study sites.
There is greater risk for error, however, in cases where refugees subsequently become Legal Permanent Residents (LPRs): if eligibility workers fail to recognize applicants' former status as refugees, then they might not apply the refugee exemption.(5) This mistake might occur more frequently in offices that do not routinely use the SAVE system, since SAVE should identify such applicants as refugees.
Asylees and similar immigration cases(6) also qualify for the same exemption to the legal immigrant eligibility bars as refugees. Yet it appears there is a greater potential for confusion or error in applying the exemptions to these groups of immigrants because welfare office staff encounter these types of immigrants far less frequently and therefore are less familiar with what constitutes acceptable immigration status documentation for these types of cases.
Furthermore, whereas these difficulties might be offset through application assistance efforts, asylees have not had access to the types of application assistance provided by refugee-serving organizations, because they have usually been living in the United States for some time before their asylum application is accepted. Recent rule changes now make asylees eligible for benefits for their first five years from the date their asylum application is granted, rather than from the date they first arrived in the United States.(7) However, only a handful of workers noted this policy change, and some advocates mentioned cases where failure to correctly implement this rule change had resulted in cases where asylees were improperly denied access to benefits. The LPR and asylee examples noted here highlight the greater difficulty of making eligibility determinations in less common types of immigration cases — especially those requiring unusual types of documentation — and the ongoing challenge of tracking changes in non-citizen eligibility rules and informing workers about them.
The Food Stamp Work Requirement for Non-Citizens.(8) Discussions with eligibility workers suggest that they are called upon to apply the 10 years (40 quarters) of work exemption less frequently than the refugee exemption, in part because the quarters verification applies only to food stamps eligibility determination, and in part because most non-citizen applicants' formally recognized work history is not that extensive. As required by federal regulations, all six sites have established links with the Social Security Administration (SSA) earnings database.
Workers know how to use these links to verify work quarters even though there is typically no need to do so. The link to SSA allows eligibility workers to send a request for verification and, according to workers, they generally receive a response within a day or two. In most cases, requests for work quarters do not appear to slow down the application process appreciably or affect timeliness of eligibility decisions. All the sites also have procedures for verifying the quarters of a spouse (while married to the applicant) and parents (while the applicant was under age 18). These procedures, however, are often difficult to implement because applicants must provide signatures from these parties before SSA will release their earnings records to the eligibility worker.
While procedures are in place to use the SSA database, the database does not capture earnings for which employers have not paid into social security. This is significant because "informal work" — for which earnings may go unreported — is common among low-income immigrants, especially by those who legalized but also worked when they were undocumented. In Arlington, New York City, Sedalia, and Seattle, workers are allowed to accept pay stubs, W-2s and employer statements in addition to SSA verification. In Dallas and Raleigh, however, workers do not accept other forms of verification. Even in sites that allow these alternative forms of documentation, workers said they rarely encounter applicants who saved the paperwork from enough quarters to qualify. Some eligibility workers also indicated that they do not routinely ask about the work history of spouses or parents.
Other Exemptions to Non-Citizen Eligibility Bars. The other exemptions — for military service, veterans and their dependents — are rarely identified or activated. In the case of military service, eligibility workers generally have sufficient information to make this exemption decision because integrated applications routinely ask about military experience to verify veterans' benefits and military employment. However, there was virtually unanimous agreement among workers in all sites that it is very rare for an applicant to meet these exemption criteria.
Deeming of Sponsors' Income. One of the more nuanced but potentially important PRWORA immigrant eligibility rules concerns sponsor deeming — the policy of attributing the income and resources of a sponsor to a non-citizen when she or he applies for public benefits. Federal welfare and immigration reform broadened the potential for sponsor deeming by expanding the categories of non-citizens who are required to have sponsors in order to enter the country, the number of programs subject to sponsor deeming, and the length of time deeming lasts.(9)
At the time of our visits, it appears that eligibility workers virtually never deem sponsor income for non-citizen eligibility because deeming only applies to a very small group of legal immigrants. Many sponsored immigrants entering the United States after 1996 who might be subject to sponsor deeming rules are ineligible for federal benefits anyway due to the restrictions in welfare reform. Based on discussions with workers, it appears that they attempt to determine whether sponsor deeming applies in only two of the six sites we visited (Seattle and Arlington for TANF/FSP/Medicaid applications), and even there they virtually never have occasion to apply deeming rules.
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There are several eligibility determination documentation requirements and verification practices — beyond those specifically related to non-citizen eligibility — that affect all applicants but appear to have particular relevance for immigrants. These include social security numbers, basic identification, household composition, and employment records. This section focuses on why providing these types of information presents special issues for immigrants seeking benefits or successfully completing a program's application process.
There is marked variation in the level and intensity of required documentation and verification procedures across the four means-tested programs in this study. Food stamp and TANF eligibility determination requires a large amount of information to be submitted by applicants and verified by workers. The Food Stamp Program in particular requires an extensive amount of documentation and verification. In contrast, expanded Medicaid and SCHIP eligibility determination is much less burdensome and difficult; in particular, SCHIP often has minimal documentation and verification requirements.
Although there is some variation by site, these general program characterizations hold true across sites. Thus, those applicants who complete the application process steps described in Chapter 3 face different documentation and verification requirements depending on the program for which they apply. Employment and demographic characteristics of immigrant families and households — for example, families that are mixed in terms of members' citizenship and immigration status — may further compound difficulties associated with this aspect of eligibility determination.
Programmatic variation in document and verification requirements is due to several factors. First, even though all four programs are "means-tested" (i.e., based on income), the nature of each benefit is very different. Medicaid and SCHIP provide medical coverage to individuals and generally require less information to make what is essentially a "yes/no" eligibility determination.(10) By contrast, TANF and food stamps provide monthly benefits that vary based on characteristics of all members of the household or family unit — a determination that typically requires more information. Second, TANF and food stamps benefits are provided directly to families whereas Medicaid and SCHIP reimburse health care providers, who must submit documentation during the reimbursement process. Third, efforts to increase enrollment in Medicaid and SCHIP have led to concerted efforts in many places to simplify documentation requirements and eliminate many verification practices common to the traditional TANF/FSP/Medicaid model.(11) By contrast, food stamp eligibility is highly standardized by federal rules, and FSP's greater emphasis on benefit accuracy and fraud prevention holds states to quality control standards, which has led to greater use of documentation and verification.(12) Finally, TANF is highly devolved, with policies reflecting the welfare reform goal of reducing dependency and not increasing participation.
As discussed in Chapter 4, Social Security Numbers (SSNs) are not required for non-applicant family or household members although they may be requested and provided on a voluntary basis. During eligibility interviews, workers in all sites generally ask for SSNs for applicants and, in Sedalia and Arlington, for non-applicants as well.(13) If applicants cannot produce a SSN or say they do not have one, workers simply leave the space for this information blank.
According to discussions with some advocates and workers, immigrant households often include undocumented members and, therefore, if immigrant applicants do not understand that SSNs are not mandatory for everyone in the household, this may deter some from applying or following through with an application. Yet, SSNs are central items asked for by all eligibility workers of all applicants. Receptionist/intake workers in some sites ask for SSNs to check for current and previous benefit receipt on databases before the eligibility determination interview. SSNs are also necessary to verify current and recent employment — usually through state employment service records and new hire databases — for all household members in the case of food stamp applications. Additionally, as described earlier in this chapter, eligibility workers must verify work quarters with SSA when legal immigrants apply for food stamps. Applicants without SSNs are usually referred to SSA to obtain one, unless the eligibility worker determines that a SSN they have presented is not valid, or the applicant admits to having an invalid number.(14)
When applicants submit false or multiple SSNs, this can create extra work for eligibility workers. Workers respond by encouraging the applicant to be forthcoming on the issue so that an incorrect SSN will not be entered into the computer system. When income cannot be verified by database or workers suspect an incorrect SSN, applicants are often asked to produce pay stubs or provide verification directly from employers, as described below.
Applicants must properly identify themselves, usually at the welfare office reception desk, before they can begin the application process. Checking identification is essential to proper eligibility determination, especially to avoid duplication of cases and to tap into databases for eligibility verification. When clerical and eligibility workers cannot properly identify applicants, it may result in delays, denial of benefits, or improper eligibility determination.
In general, eligibility workers in all the study sites appeared flexible about accepting various forms of identification within accepted parameters. The most common forms of identification are drivers' licenses, passports and U.S. birth certificates. But in Dallas, eligibility workers also accept Mexican birth certificates and voter identification cards from non-citizens applying for benefits for their children or other household members. In Raleigh applicants sometimes present school IDs, other forms of picture identification, and library cards; eligibility workers there sometimes accept mail addressed to the applicant. However, as described above, those non-citizens applying for benefits for themselves must provide proof of immigration status.
In some sites, particularly those in which a large share of immigrants have arrived recently and may be undocumented (Raleigh and Sedalia), caseworkers reported difficulty in properly identifying immigrants and their household members. Part of the confusion stems from the workers' lack of familiarity with new immigrant populations. For instance, some Latino immigrants have two last names, and workers may misconstrue the first last name to be a middle name. In other cases, immigrants may work under an assumed name, and thus may present identification or other documents with more than one name to the welfare office. In sites that have been dealing with undocumented populations for a longer time, workers are aware of these issues and often directly ask applicants to disclose any and all names they use.
Immigrants frequently live in large households with members from different generations and of varying legal statuses, greatly complicating eligibility determination for FSP and TANF. Eligibility workers told us that two or more immigrant families often live in the same household unit, but usually only one family has a name on the lease. This makes verifying residence difficult, especially when the applicant is subletting illegally and therefore unwilling to contact the landlord for verification. Some workers also said they sometimes find it difficult to obtain the names and ages of all children in large immigrant families. Others noted that non-citizen applicants for TANF and FSP are reluctant to disclose the identities of certain family members or individuals living in the household, presumably because they are undocumented. As mentioned elsewhere, this reluctance may also deter non-citizens from attempting to apply for benefits in the first place.
Verification of income and employment is relatively difficult for immigrants and other low-wage workers who have seasonal or otherwise unstable work schedules and therefore receive less predictable earnings. In Dallas, for example, eligibility workers described the challenges involved with verifying employment with some large firms. These employers often have their headquarters outside the metropolitan area or the state, and applicants or workers must find staff at the headquarters that can verify their wages. Since there was a shortage of eligibility workers in Dallas at the time of our visit, there was usually insufficient staff time to contact such employers, and thus the responsibility by and large fell to the applicant.
Immigrants, particularly those who are undocumented, also often work "off the books" or for a contractor, for instance, in construction or landscaping. In such cases, they are usually required to get a letter from the employer because they do not receive a formal pay stub.(15) If the employer is a contractor who mostly hires undocumented immigrants, then he or she may be unwilling to cooperate. One worker said that sometimes immigrants do not even know the last names, telephone numbers or addresses of their employers.
Eligibility workers often have difficulty calculating average monthly income for immigrants who work irregular hours. In Raleigh, many immigrants work in agriculture or landscaping, industries in which hours worked vary greatly depending on the season and the weather on any given day. Earnings are higher during busier times, and lower when employment is slack. As a result, eligibility workers must ask for more pay stubs — sometimes up to six or eight weeks' worth — to determine average monthly income accurately.
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Based on our discussions with agency staff, administrators, and observations at the six sites, non-citizen eligibility provisions are nested within a larger set of eligibility determination rules, all of which present implementation challenges for welfare agencies and carry special implications for immigrants. Overall, it appears that the combination of automation and heavy reliance on documents significantly reduces, although does not eliminate, the margin for error in determining non-citizen eligibility. The risk for error increases when non-citizen applicants present rare or unusual immigration documents or workers are not aware of post-PRWORA eligibility rule changes.
For those non-citizens who are still eligible for benefits or who have eligible children, the application of specific PRWORA non-citizen eligibility rules is typically perceived as far less problematic than certain eligibility rules and procedures that affect all applicants. Some documentation and verification requirements — especially those in the TANF and food stamp programs for items such as household composition, employment, income and expenses — can pose more difficulties for non-citizens.
The eligibility determination process can become time-consuming for applicants when they must provide multiple pieces of paper verification (for instance, pay stubs, leases and utility bills) or collateral contacts (i.e., letters or forms filled out by employers, landlords and neighbors). Documentation and verification is particularly difficult for immigrant families when they must provide information about undocumented individuals living in the household who are not applying for benefits; statements from landlords that might reveal illegal subletting situations; or letters from employers admitting that they hired someone "under the table."
Our discussions with agency staff at all levels further suggest that more than any single factor, it is the combination of factors associated with applying for benefits — including some of the eligibility determination rules and verification procedures discussed above and language issues considered in the next chapter — that can make the application process especially challenging for immigrants. Additionally, outreach workers, advocates, and applicants in focus groups indicated that non-citizens are very concerned about the consequences of benefit receipt for their immigration status and naturalization and that many are also uncertain or misinformed about the relationship between their eligibility status and their immigration status.
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1. In Arlington, Dallas, Raleigh and Sedalia, eligibility workers or clerical staff at local welfare offices make SAVE inquiries for applications by non-citizens. In New York City, by contrast, all SAVE inquiries are centralized through either the refugee office or the Eligibility Verification Review office for non-refugee applicants. The State of Washington has received a waiver from the requirements to use SAVE for verification of benefit eligibility.
2. In a small number of cases, however, SAVE requests the welfare system to send "secondary verification that must be forwarded on paper to INS. The secondary verification process can take weeks and therefore might delay a legal immigrant's application for benefits. In Arlington, applications for benefits are approved if documents appear to be in order, even if a response from SAVE is still pending due to the need for secondary verification. Workers in other sites reported that delays due to secondary verification requests are very rare.
3. Quarters worked by spouses and parents of immigrants also count toward the work requirement.
4. Refugees are exempt from the welfare reform bar on legal immigrant eligibility for their first five years in the country for Medicaid, SCHIP and TANF, and for their first seven years in FSP.
5. Refugees are eligible for permanent residency and can become LPRs one year after admission.
6. For instance, certain entrants from Cuba and Haiti.
7. The exemption is for seven years in the case of food stamps.
8. The Farm Security Act (P.L. 107-171) was enacted in May 2002 after completion of this study and replaced the 10-year work requirement for legal immigrant adults with a five-year bar consistent with that for TANF, Medicaid and SCHIP. These changes are effective as of April 2003. Eligibility was also restored for all legal immigrant children, regardless of date of entry, effective as of October 2003.
9. Under PRWORA, sponsors must support immigrants until they become citizens or have worked 10 years, and all of the sponsors' income is deemed to be the immigrants' income until that time.
10. Other factors affecting Medicaid and SCHIP participation — most notably premiums, co-pays, deductibles, enrollment in various health plans, and coverage of various different types of health services — can be extremely complicated in Medicaid and SCHIP, but the initial eligibility determination decision is relatively simple and straightforward.
11. Of the six study sites, for example, only Texas did not allow self-declaration of income as of Fall 2001. In January 2002 Texas lightened children's Medicaid and SCHIP verification requirements and began allowing mail-in applications, but these changes did not extend to adult Medicaid applications.
12. The Farm Security Act (P.L. 107-171) enacted in May 2002 simplified verification requirements and changed quality control error reporting for the Food Stamp Program substantially. These changes are effective as of October 2002.
13. The Texas application form is designed so that this question need not come up. However, it had only been in effect for a few weeks at the time of the site visit and workers were still not completely familiar with the new design. See Chapter 4 for details.
14. This usually means that the applicant has to make a separate trip to SSA unless, as is the case in Raleigh, SSA staff are co-located at the central welfare office.
15. Undocumented immigrants applying for benefits for their citizen children must report their earnings because they are counted toward family or household income when determining eligibility, as well as when determining TANF and food stamp benefit levels.
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