Assistance Program Extended for Elderly and Disabled Refugees and Asylees

The Illinois House and Senate each have unanimously approved Senate Bill 2195, which extends for three years until July 1, 2009, Illinois’s monthly assistance program for elderly and disabled humanitarian immigrants to the United States. Sen. Carol Ronen (D-Chicago) and Rep. Harry Osterman (D-Chicago) sponsored the legislation. Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who is expected to sign the bill, has included funding for the program in his proposed budget for the 2007 fiscal year.

The Illinois Department of Human Services administers the program as part of its Aid to the Aged, Blind or Disabled (AABD) program. Through this program, created two years ago, approximately 100 elderly and disabled, low-income people who fled persecution in such places as Bosnia, the former Soviet Union, and Somalia receive subsistence support each month while they await their citizenship papers. The monthly AABD grant for participants in this program is $500, while the monthly Supplemental Security Income (SSI) grant is now $603. This is a strong incentive to become a U.S. citizen and requalify for SSI.

A provision in the 1996 federal welfare reform law makes the AABD program necessary. The law requires elderly and disabled refugees and asylees to become U.S. citizens within seven years or lose their eligibility for SSI, the federal government’s program for the indigent elderly and disabled. While most have met this deadline, others, largely due to government delays in processing their citizenship applications over which they have no control, have been unable to meet it. In his past two budgets, President Bush proposed extending the seven-year deadline for these elderly and disabled persons to become U.S. citizens, but Congress has failed to act on his recommendation.

The following organizations endorsed S.B. 2195: Bosnian and Herzegovinian American Community Center; Cambodian Association of Illinois; Chinese Mutual Aid Association; Coalition of Limited English Speaking Elderly; Edgewater Community Council; Health and Disability Advocates; Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights; Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society of Chicago; Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights; Interfaith Refugee Immigration Ministries; Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago; Organization of the NorthEast; Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law; SEIU Illinois Council; Urhai Community Service Center; Vietnamese Association of Illinois; Work, Welfare and Families; World Relief–Chicago; and World Relief–DuPage.

Contact Dan Lesser, Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, for more information.