Much at Stake for Latinos as Congress Prepares Farm Bill

    WASHINGTON, April 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Congress has started
 work on major legislation known as the Farm Bill, which extends the Food
 Stamp Program as well as programs that provide subsidies to farmers and
 various conservation, rural development, and energy programs. A new report
 from the Washington, DC-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
 demonstrates the importance of food stamps to Latinos and the need to
 strengthen the Food Stamp Program this year.
     More than 5 million Latinos receive food stamps in a typical month, and
 food stamps make up one-quarter of the total monthly income of the typical
 low-income Latino family that participates in the program. Apart from food
 stamps, this typical family has an income of a little more than half of the
 poverty line, or around $9,600 for a family of three.
     "The deep food stamp cuts Congress imposed a decade ago continue to hit
 Latinos especially hard," said Stacy Dean, director of food assistance
 policy at the Center. "This year Congress has an opportunity to undo some
 of that damage by strengthening food stamp benefits and enabling more needy
 families to get food stamps. And it could pay for these improvements by
 reining in the very large farm subsidies it gives corporate farms and
 wealthy landowners each year."
     Roughly 200 farms across the country receive at least $1 million apiece
 in federal subsidies, Dean noted.
     Dean identified three areas of potential improvement for food stamps
 this year: halting the steady erosion in benefit levels, restoring
 eligibility for groups of low-income households that have been cut off food
 stamps, and doing more to help eligible people apply for and retain food
 stamps.
     The 1996 welfare law made across-the-board cuts in food stamp benefits
 that are growing with each passing year. Food stamp benefits no longer keep
 pace with the cost of living, so the amount of food they can purchase is
 steadily declining. A decade from now, the cuts will cost a typical Latino
 working-poor parent of two almost $650 per year.
     As a result, more and more food stamp recipients are running out of
 food stamps before the end of the month.
     The 1996 law also severely restricted food stamp eligibility for legal
 immigrants. (Undocumented immigrants have never been eligible for food
 stamps.) Congress later eased some of the new restrictions, most notably by
 restoring full eligibility for legal immigrant children. But Congress has
 not yet restored full eligibility for legal immigrant adults, up to 300,000
 of whom remain ineligible because of the law.
     In addition, many immigrants who are eligible for food stamps do not
 receive them because of the fear and confusion the restrictions have
 created in the immigrant community. This is one reason why more than 4
 million Latinos (both citizens and legal immigrants) who are eligible for
 food stamps do not receive them.
     This large group includes many citizen children of immigrant parents.
 Parents who aren't eligible for food stamps but whose children are eligible
 often don't apply for food stamps for their children out of fear that this
 would affect the parents' immigration status.
     "Nearly one in five Latino households have difficulty affording
 adequate food, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That shows
 how important food stamps are to Latinos, and how much Latinos have at
 stake in the food stamp component of the new Farm Bill," said Dean.
     In contrast, the impact on Latinos of farm subsidies -- the other major
 piece of the Farm Bill -- is much smaller. For every 100 farms run by a
 white farmer, there are fewer than 3 farms run by a Latino farmer. And when
 Latinos do farm, they are only half as likely as white farmers to receive a
 government farm subsidy.
     "Continuing large subsidies to corporate farms while allowing food
 stamps for poor families to continue shrinking really doesn't make sense
 from Latinos' perspective," said Dean. "Latinos would be better off if some
 of the excessive farm subsidies were scaled back and the savings used to
 strengthen food stamps."
     The full report can be found at:
     http://www.cbpp.org/4-19-07fa-fact2.htm.
     The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is a nonprofit, nonpartisan
 research organization and policy institute that conducts research and
 analysis on a range of government policies and programs. It is supported
 primarily by foundation grants.
 
 

SOURCE Center on Budget and Policy Priorities