Back Where We Started: Panel on New Report Examining Immigrant Welfare Use

3/21/2003

From: John Keeley, of the Center for Immigration Studies, 202-466-8185 or e-mail: jmk@cis.org.

News Advisory:

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) will host a panel discussion on its new report, "Back Where We Started: An Examination of Trends in Immigrant Welfare Use Since Welfare Reform," by Steven A. Camarota, the Center's Director of Research.

The report compares immigrant use of four major welfare programs, from 1996 to 2001 and finds that while TANF and food stamp use by immigrant households has declined across the nation, the welfare gap with natives has actually widened when all four programs are considered together. Thus the 1996 effort to minimize the fallout from mass unskilled immigration through welfare eligibility bars has failed, leaving reductions in unskilled immigration as the only real-world alternative.

The full report is available at http://www.cis.org/articles/2003/back503.html

Two of Washington's leading researchers on welfare policy will join Dr. Camarota for a discussion of the report on Wednesday, March 26, at 9:30 a.m. in the Lisagor Room at the National Press Club.

Speakers:

-- Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, and author of "Back Where We Started: An Examination of Trends in Immigrant Welfare Use Since Welfare Reform"

-- Douglas Besharov, Jacobs Scholar in Social Welfare Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of "The Past and the Future of Welfare Reform" and America's Families: Trends, Explanations, and Choices

-- Robert Rector, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and author of America's Failed $5.4 Trillion War on Poverty

The panel discussion is free and open to the public. For more information, contact John Keeley at CIS at 202-466-8185 or jmk@cis.org.