What do you think We checked it out: Food benefits for children are routed through illegal?

Issuing public assistance in the name of children is bogus because the benefits are controlled and spent by the parents and it is the parents' income that qualifies the child. Only Medicaid-funded health care directly benefits the child only. Food stamps, cash welfare, and housing assistance are used to benefit the whole family. Illegal immigrant-headed households have the highest assistance usage at 87%, compared to 58% of legal immigrant-headed households and only 38% of US citizen-headed households. That most illegal-immigrant headed households get one or more public benefits is not surprising since they earn low wages and many get paid in cash, which doesn't have to be claimed on assistance applications since it's unreported income. In my community a fair number of fathers earn $20+ an hour, paid in cash so that employers don't have to pay payroll taxes or workman's comp. Combined with monthly benefits paid on behalf of US-born children, these families live comfortably. My notion of illegal immigrants as dirt-poor was shattered after seeing parents drive up in newish SUVs and trucks to drop off their children for a free breakfast. The solution, however, is not to deport these parents but to target employers who cheat on taxes by paying cash. We also need to reformulate all public assistance to treat it as a family benefit and to make it TEMPORARY to tide by families during a hardship like a layoff or illness. Regardless of legal status, no household should be able to collect for years, but in this country we have entire neighborhoods of households sucking on the government teat.