N.Y. State Squandered $2.1 Billion to Keep Illegals in the U.S.
When it should have used the money to send them home, in style
By David North on February 6, 2023
A recent report by the Urban Institute records the payment of $2.1 billion by New York State taxpayers to illegal aliens (and much of that indirectly to their landlords) when that money could have been used to send the same 128,000 aliens back to their homelands — in comfort and style.
U.S. taxpayers routinely spend untold billions of dollars a year in an effort to enforce the immigration law; New York taxpayers just spent $2.1 billion to help 128,000 of them continue to break the law. Only in America!
The report by the Urban Institute and an outfit named the Immigration Research Initiative is about a (so far) one-shot program run by New York State called the Excluded [i.e., illegal] Workers Fund (EWF). It was designed to provide funds to illegal aliens who had (appropriately) been excluded from unemployment insurance programs. It started in 2021 and ended three months later when it ran out of money — fortunately, unlike most welfare programs that have continuing mandates, this one self-terminated when the funds were all claimed.
Unlike most unemployment insurance programs, which give a range of weekly benefits to the beneficiaries, with the amount depending on prior earnings and the length of joblessness, EWF had two benefit levels, a one-time check for a thumping $15,600 for 99 percent of the beneficiaries, and $3,200 for the remaining 1 percent. Those with the smaller amounts did not have to meet a different set of requirements; rather, they simply had less plausible applications. I have been dealing with government benefit programs for more than 50 years, and I never heard of a consolation prize for not quite meeting the standards. Typically benefit decisions are either yes or no.
When it should have used the money to send them home, in style
https://cis.org/North/NY-State-Squandered-21-Billion-Keep-Illegals-US
