State’s caseload of immigrants on welfare on the rise

Monday, Dec. 26, 2005 | 6:59 a.m.

A state program that gives monthly welfare payments to children born in the United States with parents who are illegal immigrants has had increasing caseloads three consecutive years, state figures show.

The program, called nonqualified, noncitizen assistance, has risen from an average of 670 monthly cases statewide in fiscal 2003 to 765 cases in 2005. Over the same period, the program's cost increased from $2.1 million a year to $2.5 million.

Although the state does not keep figures on the program for Clark County, officials said about 80 percent of all welfare payments are made in Southern Nevada.

The numbers are alarming for those who favor limiting immigration.

"This is just a symptom of a larger problem: the lack of enforcement of immigration laws," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based group that favors cracking down on illegal immigration.

David Thronson, one of the founders of the immigration law clinic at UNLV's William S. Boyd School of Law, called the figures a sign of "the growth in mixed-status families."

"You see more and more families where everybody in the family doesn't share the same (immigration) status," he said. Thronson wrote about the trend in the fall 2005 Texas Hispanic Journal of Law and Policy, a publication of the University of Texas School of Law.

"It's more common to see U.S. citizen kids with parents who aren't of legal status," he said.

Thronson also said that many parents in the country illegally would have been able to gain legal status in the past, but current laws make that impossible.

"They're locked into that (illegal status) forever," he said. "(So) any family with mixed immigration status is going to be challenged economically, since the parents are not going to be able to find the best jobs."

At the same time, Thronson said, many families who may be eligible for welfare assistance based on their children having been born in the U.S. do not apply to the program -- either because they assume that such government assistance is not available to them or they are afraid to approach authorities.

Nancy Ford, Division of Welfare and Supportive Services administrator, said that she and her staff "talk about this (category) growing," but have no plans to respond to the trend at present.

Krikorian sees "two lessons" to take from the numbers.

"One, kids of illegal aliens shouldn't get citizenship," he said. "Two, illegal aliens need to be kept out of the country."

Achieving the second goal would take care of the first, he said.

"Once you fix immigration policy," he said, "changing citizenship rules just isn't as important."