Senate Finance Committee Votes to Include Restorations of Benefits to Immigrants in TANF Bill

IMMIGRANTS & PUBLIC BENEFITS

TANF Reauthorization

Senate Finance Committee votes to include restorations of benefits to immigrants in TANF bill
Immigrants' Rights Update, Web Edition, July 15, 2002

The drive to restore public benefits to immigrants took one more step forward when the Senate Finance Committee voted to include important immigrant health and welfare restorations in the bill reauthorizing the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. With the committee's vote on June 26, 2002, the Work, Opportunity, and Responsibility for Kids (WORK) Act of 2002 (H.R. 4737) will now proceed to the Senate floor. Congress is required to reauthorize the federal welfare legislation before October 2002, when the new fiscal year begins. The House version of H.R. 4737, which passed on May 16, 2002, contained no immigrant-specific improvements.

The final Senate Finance Committee bill includes:

a state option to provide Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to lawfully residing pregnant women and children, regardless of when they entered the U.S. (these provisions are identical to the Immigrant Children's Health Improvement Act (ICHIA - S. 582, H.R. 1143));
a clarification that state and local governments may use their own money to provide health services to undocumented immigrants; and
a state option to provide TANF to qualified immigrants regardless of the date they entered the U.S.

Under current law, most lawfully residing immigrants who entered the U.S. on or after the date on which the federal welfare law passed—Aug. 22, 1996—are barred from receiving Medicaid and SCHIP during their first five years in the country. States may provide comparable health assistance using their own money, but they cannot obtain any federal reimbursement if they do so.

A bipartisan group in Congress has been toiling for years to permit immigrant children and pregnant women to obtain basic care under these federal health care programs, regardless of the date they entered the U.S. Passage of such legislation, including the ICHIA, has remained a high priority for health and immigrant rights advocates since the 1996 welfare law's immigrant restrictions were first enacted. The ICHIA would allow states to lift the five-year bar and provide health services to lawfully residing pregnant women and children under federal Medicaid and SCHIP. In states that elect this option, the ICHIA also would eliminate sponsor deeming and liability for these women and children.

Sen. Bob Graham (D-FLA) proposed that the ICHIA provisions be incorporated into the Senate's TANF bill (H.R. 4737). The committee debated the Graham amendment for over an hour but finally voted by a 12-9 margin to include the ICHIA in H.R. 4737. Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Frank Murkowski (R-AK) joined all Democrats except Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) in voting for the Graham amendment. Unfortunately, given the nature of that debate, it is possible that amendments to weaken or eliminate the ICHIA will be offered when the bill is considered by the full Senate.

State and Local Health Care. Another significant amendment to H.R. 4737 adopted by the Senate Finance Committee would clarify that states and local governments are free to provide health services with their own funds without checking immigration status. Their ability to do so has been called into question by some state officials' interpretations of section 411 of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA).

The state and local health care amendment was introduced by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), who argued that state and local governments should not be hindered in their ability to provide broad, population-focused public health services to their residents. Sen. Bingaman called attention to two egregious cases-a man's death and a two-year-old child's emergency surgery-that resulted from the University of New Mexico's current policy of denying nonemergency care to certain immigrants. The Bingaman amendment was adopted by a 13-8 vote, with Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) joining the same group of committee members who had supported Sen. Graham's ICHIA amendment.

TANF Restoration. The welfare reauthorization bill passed by the Finance Committee also gives states the option to provide TANF to qualified immigrants regardless of the date they entered the U.S. Under current law, qualified immigrants who entered the country on or after Aug. 22, 1996, are barred for five years from receiving federal TANF services, including child care, transportation subsidies, and English as a second language (ESL) classes. The provision allowing states to eliminate this restriction was included in the version of H.R. 4737 introduced by Sen. Baucus and was not amended by the Finance Committee.

The fight to restore core benefits to these vulnerable populations has been long and arduous, and it would not have been possible without the hard work and perseverance of immigrant rights, anti-poverty, health, and faith-based groups around the country.

Final passage of these provisions, however, is not guaranteed. The TANF reauthorization bill will likely go to the Senate floor in September. Senators with a history of voting to restrict immigrants' access to benefits may try to alter or remove these hard-won provisions at that time.