CIS Study: Non-Citizen Households Use Welfare at Higher Rates Than U.S.-Born Households in Nearly Every State

Researchers Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler at the Center for Immigration Studies analyzed a combined 2021–2025 sample of the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement, finding a 19-percentage-point gap in welfare use between non-citizen-headed and U.S.-born-headed households nationally. The study counted a household as a welfare recipient if any member — including U.S.-born children — received benefits from programs such as food stamps, Medicaid, WIC, SSI, TANF, free school meals, or subsidized housing. State-level data showed particularly wide gaps in New York (61% vs. 33%), Massachusetts (55%), California (54%), Arizona (53%), and Maryland (50%). The authors noted that higher welfare use among non-citizen households was not driven by lower workforce participation — 87.5% of non-citizen households included at least one worker, compared to 70% of U.S.-born households — but rather by lower wages, larger family sizes, and the eligibility of U.S.-born children in those households. Federal law bars most new legal immigrants and undocumented immigrants from many federally funded programs, but the study argues these restrictions have had limited practical effect. Critics, including researchers at the Cato Institute, have argued that the household-level methodology — which attributes benefits received by citizen children to the non-citizen household — significantly inflates the apparent disparity. The Center for Immigration Studies advocates for reduced immigration levels, a position that has drawn scrutiny regarding the framing of its research.