Bob Filner: “I want to tell all my colleagues a brief story that we here in Congress have helped write with the passage of what we…”

“I want to tell all my colleagues a brief story that we here in Congress have helped write with the passage of what we called the Welfare Reform bill last year. Members of this body have written a story with a tragic ending, but it is not too late to change it. This is the story of Marta Molina and her 24 classmates at the San Diego Center for the Blind. All are long-time legal residents of this Nation whose supplemental security income will end in a few months unless there is legislative relief or they are naturalized as citizens. Marta, who is 44 years old, is the mother of two grown children she raised by herself following a divorce 10 years ago. She and others in her English and life skills class began studying for the citizenship test well before welfare reform was enacted. After evaluating Marta's degenerative blindness, cataracts and cataract surgery, her physician asked the INS to give Marta extra study time. Because of the rigid mandates of welfare reform, she has no more time. Marta's situation is serious, but the predicament of some of her other classmates is even worse. They are on dialysis and they can possibly die if their Medicare ends. The INS, which should not be in the position of correcting welfare reform's cruel and arbitrary cutoff of legal immigrants' benefits, including the blind, frail, and elderly, was asked to ease the naturalization process for some of these immigrants, but the INS's new rules will not help these blind students.”