FAP’s Residency Restrictions Currently Leave Most Eligible Individuals Without Benefits

March 1, 2004

Author: Barbara Weiner

By enacting the Food Assistance Program (FAP) in the Fall of 1997, the Legislature provided state funded food stamps to particularly vulnerable groups of immigrants. The State’s food stamp program ensured, at least in the districts willing to participate, that elderly and disabled immigrants and children would not be left without food as a result of the immigrant related restrictions enacted by Congress in the 1996 federal welfare reform legislation (PRWORA). It was 1997, so establishing a requirement that, to be eligible, the immigrant had to have lived in the U.S. on August 22, 1996, left few otherwise eligible people without access to program benefits. Later, survivors of domestic violence with qualified immigrant status were added to the list of qualified immigrants eligible for benefits.

Now, seven years after its enactment, the 1996 residency requirement of FAP leaves many, if not most, needy immigrants who would otherwise be eligible for benefits, without help. The residency restrictions in FAP may also be unconstitutional. Recently, Judge Diamond of the New York Supreme Court issued a preliminary injunction, prohibiting New York from applying the residency and travel restrictions of FAP to the named plaintiffs. (Teytelman v. Wing, Supreme Court, New York County (Index No. 402767/02).

The fact that FAP is a county optional program also leaves a substantial proportion of elderly immigrants and immigrant survivors of domestic violence without access to the program. In particular, a program aimed at helping survivors of domestic violence should not be operational in only a few districts, even if those districts are those in which a majority of New York’s immigrants live. The ability to relocate for safety reasons is a critical piece of surviving domestic violence. FAP must be made available statewide. It is not an expensive program and the state could give some fiscal relief to counties by fully funding the benefits.

Federal Restorations Still Left Elderly Immigrants and Survivors of DV in Need

Because the Food Stamp Reauthorization Act of 2002 made children and disabled immigrants eligible for federal food stamps without regard to their date of entry, these two groups no longer need FAP benefits. However, Congress did not offer the same special protection to the elderly or to victims of domestic violence. Thus for them, the State’s food stamp program remains a critical resource.  Though both groups are eligible for federal food stamps once they have resided in a qualified status for five years, this does not answer the need.

An elderly immigrant who is needy will have little ability to find work to be self-supportive. Though most survivors of domestic violence will be able to work at some point, while they are in the process of self-petitioning for residence under VAWA they are not permitted to work. The self-petitioning process often takes at least a year. For them, the first year or so after leaving their abuser and filing their self-petition is the time they are most in need of benefits.

Funding FAP Statewide and Removing the 1996 Cut-off Date is Financially Feasible

FAP has never been a high cost program. Over the last few years it has almost never used the full appropriation provided by the Legislature. We estimate that expanding the program statewide and providing benefits to elderly immigrants and survivors of domestic violence who came to the U.S. subsequent to August 22, 1996 will require no more than two million dollars a year. Compared to the relief it will bring to the beneficiaries of such expansion, in terms of enhanced nutrition and better health, it is a small price to pay.

This cost estimate was arrived at as follows:

Survivors of domestic violence:

• The Vermont Service Center, the immigration office that processes all self-petitions filed by immigrant victims of domestic violence in the United States, currently approves approximately 4500 self petitions a year.
• New York is home to about 15% of the country’s immigrants. Thus we estimate that approximately 675 of the self-petitions granted each year will be for New York residents.
• Not all of the successful VAWA self-petitioners will be financially eligible for benefits. Furthermore, the food stamp participation rate of even eligible immigrants is about 45% (based on general USDA estimates). Even assuming that up to three quarters of all VAWA selfpetitioners are financially eligible for FAP, and that 45% of those eligible will actually participate, at that rate, only about 230 immigrant survivors of domestic violence would enter the program in any given year.
• Though our experience has been that most successful VAWA self-petitioners begin to work soon after they are authorized to do so, if we assume up to an average of two years of participation by each of these 230 individuals, there would be only 460 participants in FAP who are eligible based on domestic violence.
• With the average monthly food stamp benefit cost per person estimated by USDA at $102, the annual cost of providing FAP to immigrant survivors of domestic violence would be between $563,000.

Elderly Immigrants:

• Approximately 8,000 elderly immigrants enter New York each year.
• About 20%, or 1600, have incomes that would make them FAP eligible.
• According to USDA, the participation rate of eligible elderly people in the food stamp program is about 30%. Thirty percent of 1600, the number of poor, elderly immigrants arriving in NY each year, means that about 500 or so would turn to the food stamp program for assistance.
• Not all of these individuals will need FAP. A substantial percentage of the elderly immigrants arriving in New York are likely to have some health problems, and the poorer among them likely to have the most serious problems. If they are determined to be disabled, by for example qualifying for disability based Medicaid, they will not need FAP benefits, since they will be eligible for the federal food stamp program.
• Thus, assuming that at least one quarter of the 500 elderly and poor immigrants entering New York in any given year are likely to have health problems serious enough to qualify them as disabled for federal food stamp purposes, and assuming further that the others would remain on FAP for an average of, at most, 2 to 3 years (we think a reasonable assumption based on the age of this group and the likelihood that health problems are likely to develop over time, making them eligible for federal benefits), the annual cost to provide FAP to elderly, qualified immigrants in New York would be slightly more than $1.1 million. (.75 x 500 x 2.5 years x $102 monthly benefits x 12 months = $1.147 million).

Estimated cost to provide FAP benefits to qualified immigrants who are elderly or survivors of domestic violence: $1.7 million