I want the Record to show that if I had been able to be present in this chamber when these votes were cast, I would have voted 'yea' on each of them.

This bill represents a significant step towards rectifying several of the most controversial outcomes of welfare reform by protecting dependent children, addressing the mixed household problem and providing essential food assistance to…

Since the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act in 1996, legal immigrants have been denied access to vital health, income and nutrition assistance programs.

Fear and Hunger in the Wake of Welfare Reform.

The immigrant provisions of PRWORA created new categories of distinction among immigrants based not on their legal status, but on their date of arrival in the U.S.

Although the majority of legal immigrants were 'qualified,' most were nonetheless barred from SSI and Food Stamps until they were naturalized.

This law did not address immigrants who entered after the arbitrarily chosen cut off date.

PRWORA's provisions requiring public agencies to report to the INS any persons 'known to be unlawfully present' in the U.S., have exacerbated this fear.

One of the most egregious problems directly resulting from PRWORA has been an extraordinary increase in hunger among legal immigrants.

Legal immigrant households were ten times more likely than the general population to suffer from severe hunger.

The Fairness to Legal Immigrants Act of 1999...proposes the most extensive restoration to date and offers the first substantive opportunity to right the wrongs done to legal immigrants by PRWORA.

Wholehearted support by this Congress would send a clear message to law-abiding, taxpaying immigrants that they need not fear, that they need not go hungry and that they will not be abandoned in their times of need.