The Center for Immigration Studies announced that 49.4 percent of immigrant-headed households in Florida utilized at least one major welfare program, compared to 38.1 percent of U.S.-born-headed households. This announcement was made in a report by the Center for Immigration Studies.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), detailed data is provided on household participation in federal and state welfare programs, including Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), housing assistance, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). It serves as the government’s primary dataset for assessing national and state-level welfare participation.
In Florida, 49.4 percent of immigrant-headed households used one or more major welfare programs in 2021, compared with 38.1 percent of U.S.-born-headed households — an 11.3 percentage-point difference. The welfare use rate for non-citizen households in Florida was reported to be 16.6 percentage points higher than that for U.S.-born households.
The report found that Florida and Texas, which have the second- and third-largest immigrant populations in the United States, recorded lower immigrant welfare use rates than New York and California. The study attributed this difference partly to Florida’s less expansive state-level welfare provisions.
The Center for Immigration Studies, founded in 1985 and based in Washington, D.C., is an independent nonprofit research organization that examines the demographic, economic, and fiscal impacts of immigration on the United States. It publishes policy reports, data analyses, and research on national immigration trends.
