Millions of Americans could go hungry if President Trump moves forward with a draft executive order that restricts the welfare benefits available to immigrants, according to experts in immigration law.
That’s because the order would restrict access to needs-based nutrition programs, like SNAP and WIC, that are currently accessed by millions of first-generation immigrants both for themselves and on behalf of their second-generation, citizen children.
According to a recent analysis by the National Academies of Sciences, 45.3 percent of all immigrant-headed households with children use a food assistance program. Eighty-eight percent of all children living with immigrant parents are themselves U.S. citizens.
[The basic error of Trump’s draft order targeting immigrants on welfare]
“He would literally be taking food out of the mouths of babes,” said Kevin Appleby, the senior director of international migration policy at the Center for Migration Studies, “and some of them would be U.S. citizens.”
