Rural Laws: April, 1998 - Number #2

Congress delayed a vote on the Agriculture Research Conference report until after April 20, 1998. The bill includes $818 million over five years to restore Food Stamp benefits to 250,000 of the legal immigrants removed from the rolls in September 1997.

If enacted into law, on November 1, 1998 Food Stamp benefits would be restored to: 1) refugees, who will be able to receive Food Stamps for seven years, up from five years; 2) 20,000 Hmong who are members of families that fought for the US in southeast Asia; 3) certain (Jay Treaty) cross-border Indians; and 4) legal immigrants who were 65 or older and present in the US on August 22, 1996, who are or who become disabled, and poor immigrant children who were present in the US in August 1996.

Some 935,000 legal immigrants were removed from the Food Stamp rolls when provisions of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 went into effect in September 1997. President Clinton proposed in February 1998 that $2.4 billion be spent over five years to restore Food Stamp benefits to 730,000 legal immigrants.

In an analysis of 1996 Food Stamp data, USDA reported that 51 percent of recipients were children; of the households receiving Food Stamps, 60 percent contain children. The average monthly income of households receiving Food Stamps was $528, but only 22 percent of Food Stamp households reported any earned income. The number of Food Stamp recipients fell to 20 million in December 1997, down four million from December 1996. The peak number of recipients was 27 million in December 1994: http://www.usda.gov/fcs