By Liany Elba Arroyo, Associate Director, Education and Children's Policy Project, NCLR
Some members of Congress are up to no good again. Over and over in pretty much every debate this year, the House of Representatives or the Senate has attempted to deny Latino children access to services that they need in order to pay for other things like tax cuts for millionaires. This time it's Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions's turn at the piñata.
This week or next, the Senate is expected to vote on the "Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2012," commonly referred to as the Farm Bill. The proposed bill cuts $4.5 billion over ten years from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), which means that nearly 500,000 households will see their benefits reduced by an average of $90 per month. These cuts are already devastating enough for the thousands of families who rely on the program to put food on the table, but some senators feel that the cuts do not go far enough.
Senator Sessions is proposing an amendment that will hurt at least 4.5 million Latino children. The amendment requires that every person in a household show proof of citizenship before anyone in the home applies for SNAP. While this may appear to be a fair solution to some, the amendment is not nearly as reasonable as it seems.
Many U.S. citizens don't have official proof of their citizenship readily available. According to Peter Orszag, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, "virtually all of those who have been unable to provide the required documentation are U.S. citizens." For example, many are unable to afford appropriate identification or, in the case of many elderly Black Americans, were denied a birth certificate because of their race. In some places it can take anywhere from three to eight months to obtain an original birth certificate from local county officials, and it can cost up to $45 for a certificate or $100 for a passport, prices that are unaffordable for most low-income families who need assistance from SNAP. For today's multigenerational families, one household member not having proper identification means no one in the family is able to access SNAP.
And for Latinos in mixed-status families, children who are U.S. citizens will be denied access to a benefit for which they are eligible because one parent might be undocumented or a legal permanent resident not yet eligible for benefits. Given that over half of Hispanic children have at least one immigrant parent, this amendment will inordinately affect Hispanic children--who, by the way, are already likely to be eligible but unenrolled in the program. We should be investing in strategies that increase Latino kids' participation in SNAP, not stripping away their access.
Senator Sessions has it all wrong. Punishing U.S. citizen Latino children as a way to punish their parents is wrong--it is morally wrong, it is ethically wrong, and any person with half a heart can see that it makes no sense to add millions more kids to the already 16 million children who are at risk of hunger in this country. Kids who are at risk of hunger are more likely to be in poor health, have developmental and behavioral problems, and are five times more likely to attempt suicide. At a time when we should be investing in these children because they will be our future workers and leaders, Senator Sessions and his colleagues are showing the nation and the Hispanic community just how much they care about our younger generations by doing the exact opposite.
This post was originally posted on the NCLR Blog.
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Billy Shore: Invisible Issues of the 2012 Campaign
If my taxes are raised to accomodate new schools in this district I will become a protester.
I am protesting already by contacting our Mayor, our County Officials, my elected State reps and Senators, my Representative in Congress and my two Senators...and beyond. You will get no action by posting in comments. You must all take action. Visit numbersusa and usa.gov to find everything you need to do this. The Silent Majority must become 'Unsilent' and be heard!
All my adult life I've paid taxes to fund schools such as the one that you're sending your kids to, yet I have nary a child. The truth is, despite your self-righteous whining, the public education of your children has been made possible in significant part by tax money collected from people (such as I) who have no children of our own to educate. An even greater part of your children's education is being paid for by older people who have already seen to the education of their now-grown children. So while you've so busy slapping at the hand trying to take money from your pocket, you've been happily snitching money from someone else's pocket.
Of course, a great many people have been quite willing to fund public education through their taxes, even when they get no immediate benefit from the money, because they see the education of children as an important social endeavor that ensures the continued well being of our society. Other people can only jealously guard their pockets and threaten to become protestors. Go to it, but when you raise your voice in protest, don't be surprised to find that your Silent Majority is really just a grumbling mean-spirited minority.
Lune
and we AMERICANS have a simple solution to this problem of illegal immigrants, at least a large segment of it. Let's give the Southwest (including Texas and California) back to Mexico, as we stole it from Mexico during the illegal Mexican American War. Then let's give Puerto Rico back to Spain (stole that piece of real estate during the Spanish American War, also illegal) along with Florida (stolen during the Seminole Wars, sooooo illegal).
By returning these few chunks of real estate to the countries that we stole them from, we would go a long, long way toward solving the problem of undocumented immigrants.
Lune
And when will Hasidic Jews give Brooklyn back to the Mohawks?
And when will Russian settlers give Alaska back to the Eskimos?
Don't be silly.
You need ID to buy beer. You need ID to cash a check. You an ID to pay by credit card in many places.
Lets get these new IDs in place. It may cost some, but we may be avoiding another 9/11 type disaster in the process.
I thought that all illegal immigrants contribute mightily to our economy in ways that are almost superhuman? Isn't that what you are usually selling?
You have gone past any reasonable argument and are now just whiny and bothersome. Nobody forced anyone else to have children they could not afford and it is sad that the laws have to specify what should be obvious to any person with a shred of decency.
They've done a lot of damage to Americans living in poverty, working poor Americans, most American workers and their families, and especially American children born to American families. There are the opportunity costs that entrap our children in low-wage, dead-end jobs because their educational resources were siphoned off by millions of illegal aliens. There are all the economic effects: wages driven down by illegal competition, jobs lost to illegal competition, destruction of the tax base because of lower wages and higher unemployment, and more.
Now they're complaining about us cutting funding to programs that have been abused and defrauded by the dishonest foreign nationals here illegally.
It's time to enforce our laws, cut off the jobs, end all access to social services and freebies, force them to leave the US and deport those who won't leave on their own. We don't need them and can't afford them. There are millions waiting in line to come legally if at some point we need more labor we can increase the numbers allowed to come legally. No matter what, we never need to import dishonesty and corruption. It's dumb and damaging to import poverty because it's incredibly expensive to us. This has GOT to end!
They MEAN Mexicans only!!!
The Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico has been part of the United States since 1898, and its people have been US citizens since 1917. You do know that the people of Puerto Rico aren't immigrants in the way that people from Cuba or Dominica may be immigrants to the US, right?
I've a few other questions. You write "La Tino" as two words in quotation marks. What point did you mean to make by doing so? La Tino. La Tino. La Tino La Tino La Tino La Tino La Tino La Tino La Tino La Tino. Nope, no matter how many times I type it, I just can't see any point to it. Would you enlighten me? Near as I can tell, you could just as well have written "Amer Ican". Amer Ican. Amer Ican. Amer Ican Amer Ican Amer Ican Amer Ican Amer Ican Amer Ican Amer Ican Amer Ican. Nope, can't see any point to that either.
Who is "they"?
You assert that they (whoever "they" are, see above) MEAN Mexicans only!!! Are you asserting that no one in Puerto Rico or no immigrants from Cuba or Dominica have ever or are now or will at some time need some form of public assistance to keep from going hungry? In other words, do you mean that Mexican immigrants in the US are the only people who use public assistance? If so, well, that's just a silly assertion to make.
Lune
Your claim about the number of hungry kids who are obese is wildly overstated. A more accurate figure would be about 3,680,000 kids, still a sizable number. Your "paradox" isn't all that hard, though, to unravel, with some small bit of research and reasoning. Poor kids are much more likely to live on diets high in fats, carbohydrates, and sugars, as these sorts of foods tend to be much cheaper than healthier foods.
If a father knows that his kids are going to be hungry before the evening's out, he can at least put off that moment by feeding them cheap macaroni and cheese out of a box instead of giving them fresh vegetables with a low-fat cut of beef. The bowl of macaroni and cheese will stick to their ribs for some little while longer than the veggies and beef.
Lune
We need to end this dependence on food stamps. Having a child is expensive...you can't get away from that expense by assuming the federal government will feed your kid. It shouldn't. Hopefully it won't.
And come on...you can't even show an ID? That's pathetic. It's a responsibility every citizen has to take.
So the kids are here, many no doubt brought into the world by irresponsible parents, as you point out. We have to do *something* with them. You clearly imply that we should end dependence on food stamps by letting the children starve. But really, Black Rhino, don't you think that's a bit cruel? We would be much kinder to them if we just slit their throats. We already have vast slaughtering facilities for livestock. I'm sure that these slaughterhouses would be happy to take short-term government subsidies to handle the kids-of-irresponsible-parents problem for us. Likely we could reduce the amount of the subsidies by contracting with the slaughterhouses to grind up the bodies to be mixed with livestock feed.
In fact, your idea likely has much wider applicability. About eight percent of food stamp users are elderly (over 60), roughly 3,224,000 old crones and codgers. We certainly don't need these non-productive units hanging around, so we could solve a significant part of the food stamp problem *and* the social security problem if we just trundled off these old carcasses to the slaughterhouse along with the kids of irresponsible parents. In fact, the superannuated old people would likely serve the additional purpose of keeping the kids somewhat calm until their throats were slit. Win-win all around. And we could manage the problem of single-parent households by --
Well, you take my meaning.
Lune
Despite your description of a dystopia based on rampant individualism, the reduction of social services can lead to favorable ends. When a fool can't rely on others bailing them out, they'll likely be less foolish. People will have to think twice, or ten times, before having a child they can't afford. The horror of being responsible for the death of your own child, due to your own irresponsible procreation, will wake up people. Perhaps then, we can see some sense of responsibility over procreation.
As well, that stats of the expense of child rearing are well studied. A recent one claimed $235,000 for a middle class kid. Someone over 60, with no savings, who had a child or two, need to learn the lesson. Have less kids, save more money, and be responsible for your own old age. If you don't, you may suffer accordingly.