Illegal aliens cancel food stamps to avoid deportation; Washington Post horrified

Tell a liberal that one problem with illegal immigration is that illegals tax the welfare state, and they'll tell you you're a racist hater who is stereotyping these upstanding, hard-working citizens. OK, citizens of somewhere else, but that's no excuse for calling them lazy! They are our brothers, sisters, mothers and transgender cousins! They make our hotel beds and pick our strawberries! They do not come here and get on welfare!

If you say so. But if that's the case, then why would the Washington Post be crying tears of despair over this?

Since mid-January, five of Fortin’s families have withdrawn from the SNAP program. One, the single mother of three citizen daughters, had fled to Georgia to escape an abusive husband. Another, two green-card holders with four young children, were thinking of taking on third jobs to compensate for the lost benefits. These families represent a small fraction of Fortin's caseload — she estimates she has signed 200 immigrant families up for SNAP over the past six months — but based on the calls she gets from other clients, she fears more cancellations are imminent. “I get calls from concerned parents all the time: ‘should I take my kids out of the program?’” Fortin said. “They’re risking hunger out of fear … and my heart just breaks for them.” Chattanooga is not an outlier here, either. In the two months since President Trump’s inauguration, food banks and hunger advocates around the country have noted a decline in the number of eligible immigrants applying for SNAP — and an uptick in immigrants seeking to withdraw from the program..

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Their fear, advocates say, is that participation could draw the eye of Immigration and Customs Enforcement or hurt their chances of attaining citizenship. Without federal nutrition benefits, many are resorting to food pantries and soup kitchens to feed themselves and their children. The evidence is still anecdotal — and The Washington Post was unable to speak directly with immigrants who chose to cancel their SNAP benefits.

You know it's funny, but I could have sworn the left hates anecdotal evidence. I guess that only applies to doubts about global warming, or families losing their health insurance thanks to ObamaCare, or good guys foiling crimes with guns. But maybe it's true that illegal immigrants really are getting off food stamps to avoid deportation, or as the Post headline breathlessly puts it, "going hungry." I'm not sure I see the problem here. For one thing, there are other ways to get food besides food stamps. Here's how I do it: I work. I earn money. I use the money to buy food. I eat. Perhaps about outside the box for the liberal thinker, but it might be worth a try. Or you could go back to your own country, where it's actually legal for you to be, and either get a job there or get on their welfare program if they'll let you. I would certainly recommend the former, but you do what you've got to do, I guess.

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Now, without a doubt, the left will argue that I'm being extremely cruel here to the "working poor," who are earning money but not enough to buy food. That's when we get to this thing called budgeting and prioritizing. If you're earning money and you don't even have enough for food, the first thing I would suggest is that you take a look at your spending and reprioritize it. You have to eat to live, so if any priority is getting your money before food, there's your perfect opportunity to make an adjustment. And if you're really making so little that you can't even afford food and shelter, then you need to seek out a better opportunity. What? You're having trouble doing that because it's not even legal to be in the country, and/or because you don't speak much English? I'm sorry, but it's not the responsibility of the U.S. welfare system to neutralize those issues for you. By the way, if there weren't so many liberal mayors and city councils declaring themselves "sanctuary cities" and refusing to allow their police departments to help identify illegals, maybe it wouldn't be necessary immigration officials to check the welfare roles for violators of our immigration laws. But any way you look at it, fewer people getting food stamps can't be a bad thing. People are always happier when they earn their own keep. Now I suggest they take the next step and come into compliance with the law as well. Otherwise they'll always be looking over their shoulders like these three miscreants, who are now discovering this is actually not the place "where everything comes easy . . . you just hold out your hand!"