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A New York state judge ruled on 18 Aug., that New York state must pay the same benefits to legal immigrants as it does to US citizens, even though the US federal government has stopped paying its share.
The decision restores higher aid payments to thousands of disabled legal immigrants, many of them elderly refugees who were facing eviction after being cut off from federal and state disability benefits because they had not become United States citizens within a seven-year period set by Congress.
New York State will appeal the decision, because of the heavy financial burden it will place on the state.
The lawyers for the poor who started the lawsuit last December estimate that the state will owe a total of less than $1.5 million in retroactive payments to 487 refugees cut off during the last two years, and as much as $3 million a year for 2,000 refugees likely to reach the cutoff at some point during the next six or seven years, unless Congress extends the aid.
The decision also rules that the state must pay additional aid to other legal immigrants who are disabled or elderly but now considered for only the lowest level of public assistance, typically $352 a month. A US citizen in the same circumstances receives $666 monthly, the standard of need set by state law for the disabled. To reach that amount, the state adds $87 to what the federal government pays in federal Supplemental Security Income, or S.S.I.
That $314 difference, based only on their not yet being citizens, violates both the federal Constitution's guarantee of equal protection and the state Constitution's requirement that the state help the needy, Justice Solomon wrote. Since the lawsuit was filed, 10 of the 18 named plaintiffs who are refugees have become citizens and begun receiving their S.S.I. payments, but every month, new cases reach the time limit and are cut off.
