Political Quotes

“I am proud to join Senator Moynihan as an original cosponsor of the Fairness for Legal Immigrants Act of 1999. This bill takes the next, important step toward restoring benefits to legal immigrants. Legal immigrants are people in our communities who are in this country legally. They pay taxes and they contribute to our economy and society. Many of our parents, or grandparents, were legal immigrants themselves. The 1996 welfare reform law forced this group to lose their eligibility for various programs, including food stamps, Medicaid and SSI. More than 900,000 legal immigrants--including hundreds of thousands of children and elderly individuals--were cut from the Food Stamp Program alone, with nothing to abate their hunger. In the years since the passage of the welfare reform act, Congress has correctly realized that many of the cuts went too far, and slowly benefits are being restored. For instance, the 1997 Balanced Budget Act restored SSI and Medicaid benefits to a narrow class of immigrants, refugees and asylees. Last Congress, I worked hard to include $818 million in the Agricultural Research, Extension, and Education Reauthorization Act to restore food stamp benefits for thousands of legal immigrants.”