Welfare Consumption by Illegal Immigrants Is Inevitable — as Long as They’re Here

“Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders”, an executive order signed by President Trump on February 19, requires federal agencies to ensure that illegal immigrants do not improperly access welfare benefits. While the order is welcome, it cannot prevent illegal immigrants from participating in the welfare state. No order can. The reason is that illegal immigrants, although not usually eligible themselves, can access welfare through eligible family members such as their U.S.-born children. The best way to reduce illegal immigrant consumption of welfare is not to construct new eligibility rules, but to reduce illegal immigration itself.

A recent analysis from the Center used the 2022 Survey of Income and Program Participation to compare immigrant and native welfare use.¹ We expand on that analysis here to show how illegal immigrants who are heads of households receive welfare primarily through other household members.

Figure 1 comes directly from the original analysis. It shows that 59 percent of households headed by an illegal immigrant use at least one welfare program, compared to 52 percent of legal immigrant households and 39 percent of native households. Illegal immigrant households are especially likely to receive food benefits and Medicaid relative to native households.

Figure 1. Households headed by an illegal immigrant have a high rate of welfare use.

Source: 2022 SIPP.

Figure 2 provides the same household statistics as Figure 1, but it adds additional information about household heads specifically. While 59 percent of households headed by an illegal immigrant receive welfare, just 20 percent of illegal immigrant heads personally receive welfare themselves. Other members of their households, who are usually legal residents, make up the difference. The head-household distinction is especially noticeable with Medicaid, as just 1 percent of illegal household heads receive Medicaid — typically in emergency situations — but receipt by other household members pushes the rate all the way up to 39 percent.²

Figure 2. In most welfare-receiving households headed by an illegal immigrant, the welfare does not go directly to the household head.

Source: 2022 SIPP. The top number above each bar is the percentage of nuclear-family households in which any member uses welfare. The bottom number is the percentage of nuclear-family households in which the household head personally uses welfare.

Clearly, restricting the direct receipt of welfare benefits by illegal immigrants will not stop most of the welfare that flows to the households they head. Furthermore, since so many of the beneficiaries in illegal immigrant households are natural-born citizens of the U.S., new laws cannot exclude them. Due to birthright citizenship, whatever benefits are available to the children of Americans must be available to the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants as well. Even if birthright citizenship were overturned, the political pressure to provide benefits to such children would be strong. Therefore, the most effective way to reduce illegal immigrant access to welfare is to reduce illegal immigration in the first place.

Methodological Note: Household or Individual?

Because a household-level comparison involves welfare consumption by members who do not necessarily have the same nativity as the head, some immigration advocates have argued for an individual-level analysis instead. Unfortunately, that approach leads to nonsensical results.

For an illustration, consider an illegal immigrant head of household who is not herself enrolled in Medicaid but who does enroll her U.S.-born children. The household-level approach correctly concludes that this is a case of an illegal immigrant accessing welfare. After all, a parent is legally obligated to provide medical care for her children. If she does not, and the taxpayers step in to do it for her, then the parent receives a financial benefit. By contrast, the individual-level approach would assign welfare strictly to the U.S.-born children in this example. It would see only native consumption of welfare, with the illegal immigrant mother treated as self-reliant. That view is divorced from reality.

Although the household is typically one economic unit, some household members can be unrelated to the head’s family. To address that issue, Figure 3 limits the analysis to nuclear-family households — that is, a household head living with no one other than his or her spouse/partner and children.³ The same pattern emerges as in Figure 2. It shows that 53 percent of nuclear-family households headed by an illegal immigrant receive welfare, while just 20 percent of illegal immigrant heads of nuclear households personally receive welfare themselves. Here again, welfare use is high in illegal immigrant households, but the household head is not the primary recipient.

Figure 3. Nuclear-family households headed by illegal immigrants receive relatively high amounts of welfare, but most of the welfare does not go directly to the household head.

Source: 2022 SIPP. The top number above each bar is the percentage of nuclear-family households in which any member uses welfare. The bottom number is the percentage of nuclear-family households in which the household head personally uses welfare.

End Notes

¹ We define “welfare” as means-tested anti-poverty benefits. The cash category includes TANF, SSI, the EITC, and state general assistance. Food includes SNAP, WIC, and free or reduced-price school meals. Housing assistance includes both the subsidized and public types. For more information on these definitions and our methods generally, see the original analysis.

² Given that illegal immigrants are ineligible for most means-tested benefits except in emergency situations, one may wonder how 11 percent of illegal immigrant household heads receive cash, 7 percent receive food benefits, and 4 percent receive housing. The cash receipt is driven by the EITC, which requires a Social Security number, which many illegal immigrants have. The food benefit comes partly from WIC, which illegal immigrants can legally receive, and from SNAP, which illegal immigrants might mistakenly ascribe to themselves when another household member qualifies. As for housing benefits, all members of the subsidized household are arguably the direct beneficiaries. The argument is moot, however, because the SIPP records housing benefits at the household level, making it impossible to separate the head from the rest of the household.

³ The percentage of native-headed, legal-headed, and illegal-headed households that are “nuclear” by this definition are 88 percent, 84 percent, and 71 percent, respectively.