Nearly half of all Afghans and Somalis in the U.S. are on SNAP food benefits, while 52.7% of immigrant-headed households use one or more major welfare programs. Photo courtesy of Congressman Brandon Gill (TX-26).
According to a chart published by Personal Finance Wizards, 45.6% of Afghan immigrant households in the United States receive SNAP benefits. The chart, which shows the percentage of U.S. households receiving SNAP benefits by ethnicity, uses data from U.S. Census Table S0201.
Other groups with high participation rates include Somali households at 42.4%, Iraqi households at 34.8%, Dominican households at 34.4%, and Caribbean households at 28.2%.
Democrats are fond of claiming that illegal immigrants are not eligible for welfare and that illegal immigration, and immigration in general, represents a net gain for U.S. taxpayers. The term “welfare” is used specifically to narrow the scope.
The reality, however, is that legal and illegal immigrants receive hundreds of billions of dollars in federal and state assistance each year through a variety of programs, including Medicaid, food assistance programs, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), housing assistance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), SNAP, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), school meal programs, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Additional Child Tax Credit, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Medicare, and Affordable Care Act premium tax credits.
Furthermore, when it comes specifically to welfare, Democrats ignore the fact that families headed by illegal immigrant parents can receive benefits if they have U.S.-citizen children. Because the parents often work off the books, they can claim to have no income, making their children eligible for welfare benefits.
A separate analysis of 2024 Survey of Income and Program Participation data, published in February 2026 by the Center for Immigration Studies, found that 52.7% of immigrant-headed households used one or more major welfare programs, compared with 37.3% of U.S.-born-headed households. The largest gaps were in Medicaid use, at 39% versus 27%, and food assistance, at 35% versus 22%.
Among households headed specifically by illegal immigrants, the report found an overall welfare participation rate of 60.7%. One data point often cited to support the false claim that immigrants use benefits at a lower rate than native-born citizens is that SSI and housing assistance use among this group is lower than among U.S.-born households. However, the lower rate of SSI use is only because illegal aliens are largely barred from receiving SSI, although some still receive it through various means. As for housing benefits, U.S.-citizen children of immigrants, including illegal immigrants, qualify for housing assistance, so their parents do not need to apply for it themselves.
A follow-up Center for Immigration Studies report published in June 2026, using pooled 2021-2025 Current Population Survey data, narrowed the focus to non-citizen-headed households, roughly half of them illegal aliens. It found 47% of non-citizen households used one or more traditional welfare programs (TANF, SSI, SNAP, WIC, school meals, Medicaid, or housing assistance), compared with 28% for U.S.-born households, rising to 57% versus 34% once eligibility for the Earned Income Tax Credit and Additional Child Tax Credit was included.
State-level gaps were widest in Maryland, Arizona, New York, and North Carolina, and non-citizen households in every one of the highest-immigration states, including New York, California, Texas, and Florida, used traditional welfare or qualified for the tax credits at rates 20 or more percentage points above U.S.-born households in the same state.
The elevated SNAP rates for Afghan, Iraqi, and Somali households line up with federal eligibility rules that predate 2025. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1641, defines “qualified immigrants” eligible for federal benefits as lawful permanent residents, refugees, asylees, Cuban and Haitian entrants, individuals granted withholding of removal, certain survivors of trafficking or domestic violence, and certain parolees present for at least one year. This is confirmed by a National Immigration Forum fact sheet and a National Immigration Law Center guide.
Refugees, asylees, Cuban and Haitian entrants, trafficking survivors, and Iraqi and Afghan nationals holding Special Immigrant Visas were exempt from the five-year waiting period that otherwise applies to lawful permanent residents seeking SNAP, Medicaid, TANF, and other federal benefits. For SSI specifically, that same “humanitarian” eligibility runs out after seven years from the date a person obtains the qualifying status, a limit Congress imposed in 1996 on the assumption recipients would naturalize before then. Illegal immigrants have never been eligible for SNAP, non-emergency Medicaid, TANF, CHIP, or SSI under federal law.
A July 2025 federal reconciliation act tightened these rules further. Effective November 1, 2025, SNAP eligibility narrowed to lawful permanent residents, Cuban and Haitian entrants, and people residing under a Compact of Free Association, removing refugees, asylees, and Special Immigrant Visa holders from the program going forward. Corresponding restrictions on Medicaid, CHIP, Medicare, and Affordable Care Act premium tax credits take effect on a staggered schedule through 2027. The Ellis Island Argument
The Ellis Island comparison does not excuse illegal immigration, nor does it justify the percentage of legal and illegal immigrants who receive public benefits.
Critics of immigration enforcement often point out that 33% to 40% of Americans have at least one ancestor among the 12 million immigrants who passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954, largely during the Great Wave of immigration from 1880 to 1924. Americans with Italian family names, in particular, are called racists and hypocrites for opposing illegal immigration and the abuse of public benefits by immigrants.
However, critics are ignoring historical facts. During the Great Wave, entry depended on proving an immigrant would not need public support. Immigrants processed at Ellis Island were required to show they carried enough money to avoid being classified as likely to become a public charge. The required amount was typically $18 to $25. For a typical steerage-class immigrant, saving that sum, on top of the $25 to $30 cost of passage, took months or even years.
A major difference between today’s illegal immigration and legal immigration through Ellis Island was that steamship companies had a financial incentive to screen passengers before departure. Under the Immigration Act of 1891, carriers were legally required to return rejected immigrants to their home countries at their own expense, and could be fined $100 for every passenger denied entry for a preventable reason, such as a contagious disease. Agents for the major steamship lines were held personally accountable by their companies for the passengers they booked and risked losing their agencies if they transported someone who fell into an excluded category.
The system worked by weeding out those immigrants who would become a burden on the nation, unlike during the years of the Great Invasion caused by Joe Biden’s open-border policy. Steamship companies at the German port of Bremen refused to sell tickets to an estimated 8,000 prospective immigrants in 1905 alone, according to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Historians generally credit this pre-screening with keeping Ellis Island’s ultimate exclusion rate to only about 2% of arrivals, since most people likely to be turned away were stopped before they ever boarded.
Illegal immigration has no such vetting system, and immigrants entering the country, legally or illegally, who then go on to receive public benefits do not benefit the country.
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