[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 54 (Wednesday, April 30, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H2053-H2054]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          RIGHT WELFARE REFORM'S WRONGS BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Filner] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FILNER. Mr. Speaker, I want to tell all my colleagues a brief 
story that we here in Congress have helped write with the passage of 
what we called the Welfare Reform bill last year. Members of this body 
have written a story with a tragic ending, but it is not too late to 
change it.
  This is the story of Marta Molina and her 24 classmates at the San 
Diego Center for the Blind. All are long-time legal residents of this 
Nation whose supplemental security income will end in a few months 
unless there is legislative relief or they are naturalized as citizens.
  Marta, who is 44 years old, is the mother of two grown children she 
raised by herself following a divorce 10 years ago. She and others in 
her English and life skills class began studying for the citizenship 
test well before welfare reform was enacted. After evaluating Marta's 
degenerative blindness, cataracts and cataract surgery, her physician 
asked the INS to give Marta extra study time. Because of the rigid 
mandates of welfare reform, she has no more time.
  Marta's situation is serious, but the predicament of some of her 
other classmates is even worse. They are on dialysis and they can 
possibly die if their Medicare ends. The INS, which should not be in 
the position of correcting welfare reform's cruel and arbitrary cutoff 
of legal immigrants' benefits, including the blind, frail, and elderly, 
was asked to ease the naturalization process for some of these 
immigrants, but the INS's new rules will not help these blind students.
  The rules, which do exempt disabled immigrants from the English and 
civics test, provide no relief for the blind, according to the INS 
authorities, because their vision impairment does not prevent them from 
studying and taking a test. These inflexible rules do not take into 
account that a disability like blindness makes it very difficult to 
master English and civics under a strict time limit.
  These students of the San Diego Center for the Blind say they are 
terrified, living in fear of these inflexible policies that even do not 
comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. They say people are 
called at INS offices by a number flashing on a screen which they 
cannot see, and that test preparation material is not available in 
Braille or on tape. This situation demands our immediate intervention.
  When this body passed welfare reform last year, I am sure those who 
voted for it did not intend to jeopardize the lives and peace of mind 
of thousands of long-time legal residents with disabilities. But now 
that the law's unintended consequences have been brought to our 
attention in story after story,

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we must correct these wrongs. We must act to exempt the blind, frail, 
and elderly legal residents from the unintended effects of welfare 
reform, and we must give these residents the amount of time necessary 
to take the naturalization test.
  It goes without saying that our own INS office employees should be 
sensitive to and comply with the dictates of the Americans with 
Disabilities Act.
  Mr. Speaker, it is up to us to act now. We must write a new ending, 
one that averts senseless and most certainly lethal suffering.

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