The government claims to fight “child poverty” by providing benefits to low-income families so their children don’t starve. These programs also cover the citizen children of illegal aliens. Eligibility is based on the parents’ income.
However, illegal aliens working off the books do not have Social Security numbers, do not file income tax declarations, and are not even supposed to be employed. Because their income cannot be verified, the government simply accepts whatever number they write down. And if it is below threshold, the government gives them benefits.
State and local SNAP offices have policies against sharing data with ICE for the purpose of arrest or deportation, allowing this fraud to continue unchecked. The USDA claims that over 99 percent of SNAP recipients are eligible and that fraud is around 1 percent, but those figures are based on nothing. When income can’t be verified, those statistics are meaningless. And clearly, if free money is available for reporting a lower income, people will report a lower income.
This situation is exactly why so many Americans voted for President Donald Trump.
The term “child poverty” is a bit of an artificial construct since no children work or have income. It is actually the parents who are in poverty, and the evaluation is based entirely on the parents’ income. Children do not earn money, so what is really being measured is poverty in household that have children.
Liberals created the term “child poverty” to evoke emotional responses and justify higher taxes for benefit programs. In the United States, “child poverty” is defined as children under 18 who live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level. In 2024, the poverty threshold for a family of two adults and two children was $31,812.
There are two main ways poverty is measured. The Official Poverty Measure (OPM) is based on three times the cost of a minimum food diet from 1963, adjusted for inflation. The Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) accounts for government assistance programs, necessary expenses, federal and state taxes and credits like the Child Tax Credit, and considers geographic variation in housing costs.
Currently, 16 percent of all children in the United States, about 11.4 million, are living in poverty. The numbers vary depending on which measure is used: the national child poverty rate was 15.1 percent from 2021 to 2023 under the OPM, while the SPM rate for the same period was 10.4 percent. The child poverty rate increased from 5.2 percent in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022, largely due to the expiration of the expanded Child Tax Credit.
Keep in mind that the parents are writing down an income number that they have presumably underreported in order to qualify for benefits. Consequently, the children may not be living in poverty at all. The family now benefits from both illegal income and government assistance, while paying no taxes and no Social Security contributions or other deductions.
It appears that no one actually knows the true percentage of so-called “child poverty.” What is certain, however, is that the government continues to distribute benefits based on unverifiable information.
Most children classified as living in poverty receive multiple forms of government assistance. Nearly 62 percent of SNAP participants are in families with children. Among those children, 89 percent also receive Medicaid or CHIP, and nearly 20 percent receive WIC. Only about 10 percent of children receiving SNAP do not benefit from any other programs. The majority, about 60 percent, receive one additional benefit, while 30 percent receive benefits from two or more additional programs.
U.S. citizen children of illegal alien can receive federal benefits if they meet eligibility requirements, and their eligibility does not affect their parents or other family members. In other words, even if the parents are illegal and ineligible for aid, their citizen children can still qualify for SNAP, Medicaid, CHIP, or WIC. Children who are legal permanent residents or U.S. citizens may also receive SNAP benefits even if their parents do not meet immigrant eligibility guidelines.
Liberals will attack this article, claiming it seeks to rob children of food or punish the poorest families. They’ll argue that these parents earn so little that Republicans shouldn’t be worried. But let’s do the math and see why this situation is deeply concerning.
In California in 2023, the median hourly wage for illegal immigrant was $18. If both parents are working off the books at $18 per hour, their actual household income would be around $74,880 per year.
Here’s the calculation:
$18 per hour × 40 hours per week = $720 per week per person.
$720 × 52 weeks = $37,440 per year per person.
For two parents, that totals $74,880 annually.
Now, if those same parents report an income of $20,000 to qualify for benefits, they could receive government assistance as follows: roughly $9,000 to $11,000 per year in SNAP (food benefits), about $6,600 in Medicaid coverage for two children, and an additional $1,000 to $2,000 through WIC if the children are under five. That totals approximately $16,000 to $20,000 per year in benefits, not including housing, TANF cash assistance, free school lunches, or energy subsidies.
This means a family earning nearly $75,000 in unreported income could still receive an additional $16,000 to $20,000 in government aid, all while paying no taxes, no Social Security, and no payroll deductions. But hold your outrage. It gets worse. These families are working illegally, meaning they are not paying income tax, Social Security, or any other deductions, nor are they filing tax returns.
A family earning $75,000 legally would take home about $64,000 after taxes. Meanwhile, an illegal immigrant family earning the same $75,000 but reporting only $20,000 in income could receive an additional $16,000 to $20,000 in benefits. This gives them a total of roughly $91,000 to $95,000 in combined income and benefits.
In other words, the undocumented family ends up with about $27,000 to $31,000 more in total resources, around 46 percent more, than a legal family earning the same amount.
Let’s close out this article by counting the crimes. Illegal aliens shouldn’t be in the country and they shouldn’t be allowed to work. Everyone who works should be paying taxes. No one should be falsifying their income to receive government benefits, and no government benefits should be going to illegals. State agencies should be required to turn the data over not only to ICE but also to the IRS.
$720 × 52 weeks = $37,440 per year per person.
For two parents, that totals $74,880 annually.
Now, if those same parents report an income of $20,000 to qualify for benefits, they could receive government assistance as follows: roughly $9,000 to $11,000 per year in SNAP (food benefits), about $6,600 in Medicaid coverage for two children, and an additional $1,000 to $2,000 through WIC if the children are under five. That totals approximately $16,000 to $20,000 per year in benefits, not including housing, TANF cash assistance, free school lunches, or energy subsidies.
This means a family earning nearly $75,000 in unreported income could still receive an additional $16,000 to $20,000 in government aid, all while paying no taxes, no Social Security, and no payroll deductions. But hold your outrage. It gets worse. These families are working illegally, meaning they are not paying income tax, Social Security, or any other deductions, nor are they filing tax returns.
A family earning $75,000 legally would take home about $64,000 after taxes. Meanwhile, an illegal immigrant family earning the same $75,000 but reporting only $20,000 in income could receive an additional $16,000 to $20,000 in benefits. This gives them a total of roughly $91,000 to $95,000 in combined income and benefits.
In other words, the undocumented family ends up with about $27,000 to $31,000 more in total resources, around 46 percent more, than a legal family earning the same amount.
Let’s close out this article by counting the crimes. Illegal aliens shouldn’t be in the country and they shouldn’t be allowed to work. Everyone who works should be paying taxes. No one should be falsifying their income to receive government benefits, and no government benefits should be going to illegals. State agencies should be required to turn the data over not only to ICE but also to the IRS.
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