Tom Harkin: “this amendment is an important expansion of the Committee's nutrition title and I am proud to be a co-sponsor of the…”

“this amendment is an important expansion of the Committee's nutrition title and I am proud to be a co-sponsor of the Durbin amendment along with Senator Lugar and others. It builds on our provisions to restore benefits to legal immigrant children without the 5 year waiting period and apply more reasonable food stamp eligibility rules to working, tax paying immigrants. The amendment will correct an aspect of welfare reform that went too far. Legal immigrants have made countless contributions to our country but many are now in trouble. They are disproportionately represented in the service jobs that have been hardest hit in the current recession. So now is an opportune time to make improvements to immigrant eligibility in the Food Stamp Program. I also want to focus on children for a minute. We have also heard that from 1994 to 1998, 1 million poor citizen children of immigrant parents, left the program . . . a 74 percent decline for this group. These are children who are entitled to participate in the program but whose parents were confused about eligibility. Do not be mistaken, this issue affects most States in our country. For example, more than half of all low-income children in California live with a non-citizen adult. Some of these children are citizens and others are immigrants. Between 30 percent and 40 percent of low income children in Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, and New York live in families with a non-citizen.”