HIAS Urges Extension of Refugee Benefits
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society urged Congress not to cut off funding for Supplemental Security Income, which helps elderly and disabled refugees and other immigrants pay for food and shelter.
SSI funding will run out Sept. 30. HIAS urged Congress to extend funding because many refugees who are Jewish and from the former Soviet Union and Iran rely on the money for food and other necessities.
The program, which provides cash for basic needs to the aged or disabled, is available to U.S. citizens. But as a result of welfare reform enacted in 1996 refugees are eligible only on a temporary basis. Most refugees are able to naturalize, however some cannot due to age or disability.
If SSI is not extended, refugees who have received funding for years will no longer be eligible unless they have a naturalization application pending. If they are unable to become a citizen, they will be ineligble for aid.
HIAS officials asserted that failing to extend SSI would be a violation of international law, under which refugees must be accorded the same treatment as citizens and naturalized immigrants when it comes to receiving public assistance.
“It is essential that Congress and the administration move immediately to renew the SSI benefits extension and, ultimately, to delink benefits from citizenship,” said Gideon Aronoff, president and CEO of HIAS, in a statement. “Without this, we are leaving our most vulnerable residents behind and not living up to our nation’s promise of providing refuge to the persecuted and dispossessed.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
