Surprised that the Tsarnaevs of Massachusetts received welfare benefits?:
The Tsarnaevs’ parents are former recipients of transitional assistance benefits, and both Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev received benefits through their parents when they were younger. Separately, Tamerlan and his family received benefits until 2012, when the family became ineligible based on their income.
Well, don’t be. The Tsarnaevs are hardly unusual in that respect. Back in November of 2012, Jillian Kay Melchior detailed just how common it is for immigrants to receive benefits, and how the government actively encourages it:
But despite their entrepreneurial vigor, immigrants are disproportionately dependent on welfare. Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), crunched numbers from the Department of Agriculture and found that the number of non-citizens on food stamps has risen to 1.634 million, roughly quadrupling since 2001. Moreover, in August, the Center for Immigration Studies found that 36 percent of immigrant-headed households received at least one major welfare benefit. Food assistance and Medicaid have become especially popular among immigrants.
Two policy trends are driving the problem. First, the United States has promoted broader welfare use in recent years, also leading campaigns that market social aid specifically to immigrants. And second, our immigration rules are not crafted to weed out would-be freeloaders and give preference to highly skilled, highly educated applicants.
I highly recommend you read the whole thing.
So, when did this happen? It certainly seems to have arrived under the radar screen, for the most part. Who is promoting it, and why? One very obvious possibility is Democrats, in order to create more dependent Democratic voters, and more cultural and societal chaos, although the article doesn’t make it clear that these policies have been supported only by Democrats. And although the article says this “represents a major cultural shift,” it doesn’t say exactly when and how and why this shift occurred, although I’d hazard a guess that it’s been under Obama’s charge:
…[G]overnment marketing has shifted, and any number of “outreach” programs, both public and private, now seek to persuade immigrants to utilize the benefits newly available to them. Legal immigrants are potentially eligible for dozens of welfare programs, and even illegal immigrants can benefit indirectly, provided at least one member of their household is here legally.
What’s more, laws are ignored:
Federal law states that the U.S. should not admit immigrants who are likely to become a “public charge.” Yet the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State examine only the Supplemental Security Income and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programs when making this assessment. That ignores more than 75 other federal-assistance programs. Even so, State Department data show that only 0.068 percent of visa applications were denied in fiscal year 2011 because a prospective immigrant was at risk for becoming welfare-dependent.
The federal government also largely ignores educational attainment, which is probably the biggest indication of whether an immigrant will become a lifelong welfare recipient.
Where is the public outcry against this? It’s one thing to offer immigrants benefits if they happen to fall on hard times, it’s another to say “Come, come, you’ll get free stuff!!”
[NOTE: Ralph Peters has a few things to say on the subject, too. See Lesson #3, here.]
[ADDENDUM: The ever-witty Iowahawk (David Burge) has this to say: “The Tsarnaev brothers were state-supported terrorists. The state was Massachusetts.”]
