National welfare reform, which became law last summer, ends the federal guarantee of aid to poor families with children, sets a five-year lifetime limit on benefits, denies most welfare to legal immigrants who aren’t citizens and requires recipients to work after two years.
The law includes provisions that the organized Jewish community fears will unfairly affect the disabled, the elderly and immigrants.
Having given up on the idea of retracting the entire law, the Democratic senator from Greenbrae said she hopes instead to convince Congress to reshape what she considers to be the worst parts of it.
“The more we can home in on the narrow problems, the better off we’ll be,” she said. “We need to home in on stories and what will happen to people.”
Jewish community leaders offered small fixes: For example, several suggested that if the government could be persuaded to waive the requirement that the citizenship oath be taken without assistance, elderly immigrants stricken with dementia could become citizens and avoid welfare cuts.
The senator, whose mother lived in the Jewish Home from 1989 until her death in January 1991, also spent about 10 minutes answering questions from residents who had gathered for a Chanukah party.
One of the major concerns for the S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services is the effect of welfare reform on legal immigrants, especially the elderly.
“There is a substantial group of elderly people…who are not going to be able to become citizens,” said Marla Miller, a JFCS board member and chair of its public issues committee.
Added Boxer, “Some of them are right in this home.”
Hundreds of JFCS volunteers are trying to help the elderly and others to pass citizenship tests, Miller said. But some either have dementia or are too disabled to pass.
Each state is allowed to decide whether to continue providing medical care to elderly noncitizens.
Anita Friedman, executive director of JFCS, asked whether there could be a waiver to allow people with dementia to take a citizenship oath. Waivers can already be obtained for the civics test and English requirements.
The senator, who had requested the meeting with Jewish leaders, said she believed such a “narrow fix” was possible.
Boxer told of a 90-year-old woman she met who passed the civics test but repeatedly failed to recite the oath because she became too frightened.
“I don’t think we should dummy down the test. But we don’t want people to be so anxious that they have a stroke or a heart attack,” said Boxer, stressing that she wasn’t joking.
Boxer, who is up for re-election in 1998, then asked the communal heads to provide 10 examples of real people who will be affected by welfare reform.
“We’ll easily get 10 for you. We’ll do it,” said Rabbi Doug Kahn, executive director of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council.
Abby Snay, executive director of the S.F.-based Jewish Vocational Service, also asked Boxer to work on loosening up the law’s restrictions on food-stamp eligibility and on employment.
She cited Bank of America, which hires tellers at 19 hours per week. Yet welfare reform requires employees to work a minimum of 20 hours per week.
“The best that welfare reform will do is turn poor people into the working poor,” Snay said.