Help prevent anti-immigrant amendments to the Farm Bill!

[cyberswede]

Hi everyone!
If so moved, could you please contact the representatives on the House Agriculture committee and tell them you oppose the amendments proposed by Rep. Steve King (R-Racist)?

The House Ag Committee is currently considering its draft of the Farm Bill. Evidently, Rep. King is going to offer some amendments to the draft in the near future (anti-immigrant provisions, surprise, surprise). Thanks in advance for your consideration!

You can find contact info for the Committee members here: http://agriculture.house.gov/inside/members.html

Here are descriptions of the King amendments:

King I - Further restricts access of legal immigrants to the Food Stamp Program. Specifically, the amendment would permanently deny food stamps to any legal immigrant who ever was in the country unlawfully.

The amendment would be extremely costly and unworkable for states. There is no way to identify or verify whether a legal immigrant was in the country unlawfully at some point in the past. No database exists that declares whether a legal immigrant ever lived in the U.S. unlawfully. 2002 Farm Bill conferees rejected a similar proposal because the Bush Administration, National Governors Association, and the National Conference of State Legislatures opposed it as unworkable. The administrative burden resulting from this proposal would likely result in increased costs and inefficiency, greater bureaucracy, and higher program error rates.

King II - Repeals the restoration of food stamp benefits for legal immigrants who have resided in the U.S. for five years. Legislation enacted in 1996 terminated food stamps for virtually all legal immigrants. Congress subsequently recognized this went too far and restored eligibility for certain groups of legal immigrants on a bipartisan basis.

Under King's proposal, the majority of legal immigrants would be unable to access the Food Stamp Program. This amendment would cut several hundred thousand poor legal immigrants off the food stamp program, including refugees as well as those working hard and playing by the rules. Changing the immigrant eligibility rules again would necessarily complicate program administration for states by putting Food Stamp Program rules out of sync with TANF and Medicaid rules. That would increase food stamp program errors and exacerbate confusion about eligibility among legal immigrant families.