Statement of Cecilia Muñoz, Vice President, National Council of La Raza

Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Human Resources
of the House Committee on Ways and Means

Hearing on Welfare Reform Reauthorization Proposals

April 11, 2002

I.  INTRODUCTION

Chairman Herger and Members of the Subcommittee, I am appearing this afternoon on behalf of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest national Latino[1] civil rights organization.  I thank you for holding this hearing and inviting me to testify.  NCLR works to improve life opportunities for this nation’s more than 35.3 million Hispanics through our network of more than 270 local affiliate community-based organizations and 30,000 individual associate members.

NCLR has closely followed the impact of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) on low-income Latino families and has served as a voice in public policy debates related to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families(TANF) block grant.  Therefore, I appreciate this opportunity to testify in support of fair-minded public policy to strengthen the TANF program and improve the opportunities for Hispanic families to move out of poverty and into good-paying jobs.

I will begin this testimony by describing the new policy environment with respect to Latinos and the impact of the welfare reforms of 1996 that make TANF reauthorization an issue of particular importance to the Hispanic community.  Second, I intend to highlight the existing proposals in the context of Latino priorities for TANF reauthorization.  Finally, my testimony will conclude with recommendations to address more fully the concerns of this nation’s Latinos, a community of increasing political and economic importance.

 II.  BACKGROUND

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act fundamentally altered the nation’s primary cash assistance program for families.  PRWORA’s cuts in services and assistance to legal immigrants had a profound and adverse impact on immigrant and Latino families.  By cutting legal immigrants off from the four major safety-net programs, PRWORA both deeply offended hard working immigrants and put the states in the position of spending their own funds to address the needs of these communities.  While some programs have been restored, the fundamental inequity has not; leaving states in the front lines of providing a safety net to immigrants during an economic downturn. 

The 1996 law alone does not fully explain the new challenges facing states across the nation.  Since then, there have been several other notable developments that make a strong case for change via the TANF reauthorization process this year.

First, while in 2000 there were roughly half as many families on the welfare rolls nationwide as compared to 1996, the share of all families receiving TANF assistance who are Latino increased from 20.8% to 24.5% between 1995-1996 and 1998-1999.  By 1999, more than one in four children on TANF nationwide was Hispanic.[2]  These data may signal that Latino families are having a more difficult experience navigating through the welfare-to-work process than other recipients.

Second, the economy is in recession and the fiscal condition of states seems dire.  A slow growth economy coupled with the potential for a “jobless” recovery is expected to impact Latinos.[3]  Many Latino workers are concentrated in the low-wage labor market and are particularly vulnerable to job and income loss in the current economic climate.  In many cases, those workers who happen to be legal immigrants are not eligible for basic safety-net services due to welfare reform’s changes in eligibility for health and nutrition services and Unemployment Insurance (UI) rules that make them unqualified for help.  Taken together, these factors indicate that more Hispanic families are likely to find themselves in need of safety-net services in the coming months.  But many will find that the very programs that are designed to protect families and support their efforts to return to the workforce are beyond their reach.

Finally, since 1990, the nation has undergone sweeping demographic changes.  For instance, the nation’s Latino population increased by 57.9% between 1990 and 2000.  Over the decade of the 1990s Hispanic communities prominently emerged in states such as Arkansas, Georgia, and North Carolina – states that experienced greater than 300% growth in their Latino populations.  Undoubtedly, large numbers of immigrant Latino workers joining the labor force can explain the bulk of this population growth in these particular states.  However, the firms and industries that have employed many immigrant and Latino workers have tended to pay low wages.  Therefore, while almost all Latino and immigrant families in the U.S. have at least one working parent, many Hispanic workers fail to earn enough to lift their families above poverty.  As a result of these factors, by 2000, one-quarter of all poor families in the U.S. were Hispanic, and a large share of these families had foreign-born parents who were working yet still poor.  This means that entire segments of communities in states may be seeking aid but find themselves with no safety net or access to important work supports for which other Americans are eligible.  In many cases, states want to serve these families but find federal rules too constricting.

Given these factors, in 2002, states are facing new socioeconomic policy challenges.  The TANF reauthorization debate will not result in good public policy so long as it fails to address the challenges facing poor Latino families.

 III.  LATINO PRIORITIES

 Recently, the Bush Administration released a plan to reauthorize the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, the nation’s primary cash assistance program for families.  Not surprisingly, this proposal, along with existing proposals from Representatives Patsy Mink (D-HI) and Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), have generated a good deal of debate, which is helping to shape the political and policy parameters of the welfare reauthorization discussion.

Thus far, proposals for TANF reauthorization have concentrated on several core issues such as funding for TANF, work requirements, and strengthening families.  Although these issues have real implications for all families in the TANF system, no areas of the TANF reauthorization debate are likely to be more pivotal to the nation’s Latino families than improving access to TANF, strengthening the welfare-to-work services available to TANF clients with limited English proficiency (LEP), and enhancing the ability of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to implement welfare reform. 

• Access to Assistance for Legal Immigrants.  Under current law, legal immigrants who arrived after 1996 are barred for at least five years from receiving TANF and other federal safety-net services.  Although the law permits states to provide TANF and related services to legal immigrants who arrived after 1996 using state funds, most states have not been able to serve legal immigrants.[4]  Consequently, across the states, entire segments of communities are unable to access basic safety-net services should community members suffer unexpected job losses.  In response, the National Governors Association, the National League of Cities, and the National Conference of State Legislators have appealed to Congress to allow states to be given the flexibility to serve legal immigrants in their states with federal TANF funds.

Notwithstanding the practical needs of states, President Bush’s proposal posits that TANF reauthorization must safeguard against “welfare dependency among noncitizens”; a premise at odds with available evidence.[5]  Though the White House did support a provision that would allow greater access for legal immigrants to Food Stamps, the TANF measure specifically ensures that working families would remain unable to access these services if needed. 

On the other hand, proposals from Representatives Cardin and Mink would, to varying degrees, ensure that states can use federal TANF dollars to provide basic services to legal immigrants.  Specifically, Representative Cardin’s bill improves access by eliminating the 1996 welfare reform law’s ban on states providing TANF assistance to legal immigrants and reducing to three years the period during which a sponsor’s income would be deemed available to the immigrant.  Representative Mink’s bill goes further by making legal immigrants eligible for TANF on the same basis as citizens, removing all barriers, waiting periods, and “deeming” requirements that restrict eligibility.

• Improving Welfare-to-Work Services for LEP Families.  Language barriers have constituted a major challenge to the efforts of states to communicate effectively with and provide TANF services to many Hispanic families.  This issue has impacted both native-born[6] and immigrant Latinos who have a strong desire to get into the workforce but have not been able to access appropriate welfare-to-work services given their language barriers.  Moreover, in many cases LEP Latino and immigrant welfare “leavers” exit the TANF system unaware of the important transitional medical and other work supports available to them.[7] 

Although existing proposals take some steps to bridge language barriers, none comprehensively address the concerns regarding the challenges that states face in adequately serving LEP families.  Provisions to strengthen state plans, revise data collection requirements, and perform assessments have the potential to impact families with language challenges positively.  However, the existing proposals do not comprehensively address the challenges states face in adequately serving LEP families.  Although both President Bush and Rep. Cardin focus generally on strengthening state plans, their proposals do not specifically mention LEP families, allowing the needs of such families to be overlooked.  Furthermore, despite the Mink bill’s efforts to strengthen data collection, the required demographic information does not include primary language or English proficiency.  Also, the provisions focusing on data collection in the President’s proposal move away from recording information on families receiving TANF by focusing instead on information related to management and performance, such as TANF-funded services and expenditures.  Finally, although the proposal from Rep. Mink would provide individuals with the option to do a skills assessment, TANF recipients facing language barriers may not understand the option or elect to be assessed; whereas, fortunately, Rep. Cardin’s proposal would require that every TANF recipient’s employability be assessed and states that the assessments would consider limited proficiency in English.

An important tool for improving the employment outcomes of LEP Hispanics is English language instruction.  However, the work-first philosophy and limits on what can count toward the work requirements of TANF have dissuaded many states from placing people in English language programs.  Also, there is significant concern as to whether the White House proposal would increase flexibility or significantly limit the opportunities for LEP TANF recipients to participate in training activities, such as English language instruction. 

The Administration’s proposal would impose a 40-hour work week on recipients (up from 30 hours under current law) and require that at least 24 of the 40 hours be in “direct” work activities.  Furthermore, the White House proposal would only allow participation in job training, possibly including English language instruction, for up to three consecutive months within a two-year period.  Under current law, a state may count full-time vocational training for up to 12 months.  Aside from the provision for three months of job training, TANF recipients would only be able to devote 16 hours per week to training activities such as English language instruction.  The increased number of hours of participation will force parents of school age children to participate in “direct” work activities during the entirety of their child’s school day (although such schedules are difficult to obtain in the low-wage/low-skill labor market).  Should a parent intend to improve their English proficiency, they would have to pursue this training after school ends, forcing them to seek child care (although the Administration has only proposed continuing child care funding at FY 02 levels). 

The existing bills in the House provide much more flexibility for TANF recipients to gain the necessary language skills to obtain and keep good-paying jobs.  For instance, the Mink bill allows all education and English instruction activities to count toward the work participation rate and eliminates the one-year limit on participation in vocational education.  Representative Cardin’s bill makes similar changes by counting English language instruction for ten of the 30 hours required for work participation rates and extending the limit on vocational education to two years. 

• Reducing Funding Disparities in Puerto Rico.  President Bush made an important first step in addressing the funding inequities that face the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and other territories by explicitly including territories in the marriage grant program.  Unfortunately, the President’s other proposals did not extend other grants to Puerto Rico, whose TANF program is severely under funded due to a cap on welfare funding and its exclusion from many funding streams.  Since Puerto Rico and other territories comply with the same obligations and requirements as the States, they should be fully included in the funding of TANF programs to ensure that Puerto Ricans and other U.S. citizens are not disadvantaged by the block grant formula.

IV.  RECOMMENDATIONS

The priorities that the National Council of La Raza has outlined for TANF reauthorization correspond directly with the intent of the law, and respond to the practical challenges facing the states.  To ignore wholly these issues in comprehensive TANF reauthorization plans, or to take steps that exacerbate these problems, is both bad policy and bad politics.  In order to address these issues in TANF reauthorization, NCLR urges the members of the Subcommittee in Human Resources to:

• Support provisions that improve access to services for legal immigrant families.  NCLR commends Representatives Cardin and Mink for including provisions that will provide a safety net to families and citizen children of immigrant parents and believes that such provisions must be included in any bill to reauthorize TANF.
• Resist proposals that place undue restrictions on state efforts to serve legal immigrant families.  Amendments requiring that states verify that individuals have never been undocumented or that TANF applicants are in the process of becoming citizens invalidate any provisions that improve access for legal immigrants.  Such onerous provisions would be incredibly difficult for states to implement and would discourage families from applying for assistance for which they are eligible.
• Ensure that states can effectively serve limited-English-proficient families.  NCLR believes that four provisions can bridge language barriers between service providers and LEP clients.  First, a no-cost provision that would assist states in their efforts to serve LEP families adequately would be to request that states include as elements of state plans a goal and strategy for serving such families.  Second, reliable data on all who seek services from TANF offices would identify districts with specific language needs.  Third, assessments are key to providing effective services to LEP clients.  Finally, a measure to channel resources to states for assisting them in building capacity to serve LEP families more effectively must be considered.  Given the number of states that are experiencing language challenges, Congress and the White House ought to consider proposing a comprehensive formula grant program to states which adequately meets this need.
• Focus on improving the English proficiency of TANF recipients.  In order to prepare LEP parents for employment opportunities that will provide for their families, TANF reauthorization should focus on education and skill barriers.  While assessments would help professionals place LEP parents in programs that are appropriate to their skill levels, TANF’s work requirements must provide states with flexibility and incentives to place recipients in education and training programs for a sufficient amount of time to ensure that the programs are effective.
• Address the challenges faced by Puerto Rico in implementing its TANF program.  In order for Puerto Rico to meet the same mandates as other TANF grantees, it is essential that similar resources be provided to the Commonwealth as the States.  One of the most significant funding limitations on Puerto Rico’s TANF program would be addressed by taking IV-E Foster Care out of the Section 1108 cap.[8]  Furthermore, Puerto Rico’s Medicaid program is statutorily capped, the Commonwealth may only access two of the four components of the Child Care Development Block Grant, and it is excluded from receiving the Supplemental Grants, although the Island otherwise meets the requirements.  Therefore, Puerto Rico should have access to the same funding streams as the States, and such funds should be excluded from the Section 1108 cap.

NCLR urges the Subcommittee to address in a meaningful way the concerns and recommendations that I have presented today because the treatment of immigrants, families with limited English proficiency, and the residents of Puerto Rico will not go unnoticed by the broader Latino community.  I appreciate this opportunity to testify and encourage you to call on NCLR as you consider policy proposals related to these issues.

[1] The terms “Latino” and “Hispanic” are used interchangeably to refer collectively to Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Central and South Americans, and others of Spanish and Latin American descent.  Hispanics can be of any race.

[2] For a more detailed assessment of TANF caseloads see:  Rodriguez, Eric, and Kaydee Kirk, Welfare Reform, TANF Caseload Changes, and Latinos: A Preliminary Assessment.  Washington, DC: National Council of La Raza, September 2000.

[3] Suro, Roberto, and B. Lindsay Lowell, New Lows from New Highs: Latino Economic Losses in the Current Recession.  Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, January 2002.

[4] Currently, 23 states provide services to legal immigrants using state funds.

[5] Research by the Urban Institute found that, during the last half of the 1990s, more immigrant families moved out of states that opted to provide TANF services to legal immigrants than those that moved into states with TANF access.  See: Passell, Jeffrey S., and Wendy Zimmerman, Are Immigrants Leaving California? Settlement Patterns of Immigrants in the Late 1990s.  Washington, DC: Urban Institute, April 2001

[6] Persons from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico are native-born U.S. citizens, and many are limited-English-proficient.

[7] Previous research by NCLR has shown that Latinos constitute an increasing share of the TANF caseload.  Numerous studies have documented language barriers between LEP clients and human and social service offices; e.g., Applied Research Center, Equal Rights Advocates, National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support, and HHS Office for Civil Rights.  Analysis of the Food Stamp Program (FSP) by the Food Research & Action Center has shown that over half of eligible Hispanic individuals fail to receive FSP benefits.  Also, analysis of both Medicaid and the Food Stamp Program by the Urban Institute has documented an exodus from both work support programs by families leaving TANF.

[8] The Section 1108 cap restricts total welfare funding because several unrelated programs currently fall under this cap: TANF, IV-E Foster Care, and Assistance for the Aged, Blind and Disabled (this is Puerto Rico’s substitute for Supplemental Security Income, from which the Commonwealth is excluded).