The AFL-CIO strongly urges members to support U.S. Representative Joe Baca's motion to instruct conferees on H.R. 2646 -The Farm Security Act when it comes up for a vote on Tuesday, April 23rd. The motion would instruct House conferees to accept the Senate position on restoring food stamp benefits for legal immigrants. It offers an opportunity for the House to reject the narrow-minded attack on illegal immigrants that led to the food stamps ban in 1996.

The Senate has recognized the injustice of the legal immigrant food stamp ban and voted to lift it, but the House has not committed to end the discriminatory provision included in the '96 welfare reform law that cut off food stamps to legal immigrants.

Legal immigrants pay the same taxes as all workers, but because of the 1996 law, legal immigrants pay taxes to support a food stamp program for which they are not eligible. As a result, immigrant utilization of the food stamp program has dramatically declined among children. In three states with large immigrant populations - Texas, California and Illinois - legal immigrant households are 10 times more likely than non-immigrants to suffer from severe hunger.

Although 16 states currently use their own funds to replace federal food stamps to immigrants who became ineligible after 1996, the budget crises confronting the states makes it extremely unlikely that they can meet increasing demands as the recession and unemployment crisis unfold.

The recession and lingering unemployment crisis have devastated immigrant communities. The food stamp program and other social insurance programs are designed to help families weather an economic crisis, such as the hemorrhaging of jobs from the tourism and hospitality industries following September 11. In the case of the food stamp ban, the social insurance program doesn't work for everyone and the eligibility is based only on ethnicity and race.

The nation's food stamp program must be well funded and accessible enough to reduce hunger among all low-income families. Hunger does not discriminate; nor should social insurance programs.

For Information: Kathy Roeder 202/637-5018