SNAP Benefits Shutdown: A Good Time to Reassess – 54% of Federal Benefit Recipients Non-Citizens

Instagram and Twitter are abuzz with complaints about how the government shutdown is cutting SNAP benefits, and children in the U.S. are going hungry. Liberals blame Republicans for the shutdown and claim Republicans don’t care about Americans.

Of course, liberals omit the fact that the shutdown happened because Democrats refused to cut funding for illegal aliens. And as for children “going hungry,” only about 4 percent of American households face what’s called “food insecurity,” which is not the same as hunger. These households already qualify for federal assistance programs. In reality, there is almost no true hunger in the United States.

If Democrats are truly concerned about these people, they shouldn’t have allowed the government to shut down.

Moving from logic to data, liberal media claim that 89.4 percent of SNAP recipients are U.S.-born citizens and less than 11 percent are foreign-born, including 6.2 percent naturalized citizens, 1.1 percent refugees, and 3.3 percent other non-citizens (such as lawful permanent residents). Therefore, they say, Republicans are wrong to argue that benefits are going to illegals.

However, with statistics you must ask the right questions to get the right answers. The issue isn’t just individual recipients; it’s households. Illegal-alien parents can and do use their U.S.-born citizen children to qualify for benefits, and the numbers are staggering.

More than half of all illegal-immigrant households have at least one U.S.-born child through whom they can receive aid. Nearly 2.7 million households have at least one illegal head and one child, and more than 5.3 million U.S.-born children of illegal aliens hold Social Security numbers. The total estimated cost to American taxpayers of providing SNAP benefits to the children of illegal aliens is almost $5.8 billion.

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