Callous Move Against Food Aid

A bill that ought to breeze through Congress, restoring $818 million in food stamps to legal immigrants, has hit a last-minute wall of Republican leaders in the Senate. By trying to kill the measure through parliamentary maneuvering, they are denying the whole Senate a chance to vote.

The measure would restore food stamps to about one-fourth of the nation’s 1 million legal immigrants who lost them last August as a result of federal welfare reform.

The stamps would go mostly to refugees, children, the elderly and disabled. The legislation has already passed a House-Senate conference committee but is being held by the GOP leadership just an inch short of a final vote.

There is no cash assistance in the bill, just food aid for legal immigrants who have played by the rules, many of them taxpayers whose benefits, despite their need, were cut off without appeal. Charities and local governments report a surge in food aid requests, attributing it to this and other effects of welfare reform.

If the bill does not move to a vote before Congress goes into recess this week the same pot of money almost certainly will be spent on programs unrelated to food stamps. California would lose out on about $188 million ticketed for its high immigrant population.

Latino and Asian immigrants continue to hear from the Republican leaders that the GOP wants to welcome them into the party’s fold. Rejecting food aid is hardly the way to find new adherents. This is a chance for the GOP to walk the walk with immigrant communities. The party should let the measure come to a vote. Denying food aid to legal immigrants who’ve been here for years is not going to stop illegal immigration, if that is the Republican intent here. Putting food on the tables of those who need it could produce both political and humanitarian rewards.