{"id":5753,"date":"2026-06-11T01:40:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T22:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/?p=5753"},"modified":"2026-06-11T01:40:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T22:40:26","slug":"california-drives-welfare-payments-to-illegal-immigrants-hhs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/california-drives-welfare-payments-to-illegal-immigrants-hhs\/","title":{"rendered":"California drives welfare payments to illegal immigrants: HHS"},"content":{"rendered":"

The report, published Wednesday by the federal Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families, found that over 85,000 households nationwide received cash assistance through so-called child-only cases in fiscal year 2024, as New York Post<\/em> reports. Nearly 60,000 of those households were located in California alone.<\/p>\n

These cases involve welfare benefits officially issued on behalf of children whose parents cannot qualify for assistance themselves due to immigration status and other factors.<\/p>\n

Federal officials criticized the arrangement as a loophole that redirects taxpayer money to households led by non-citizens. The report noted that although the benefit is formally paid on behalf of the child, it nevertheless supports a household that includes a parent ineligible due to immigration status.<\/p>\n

Work Requirements Waived for Illegal Immigrant Households<\/h2>\n

Under the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, most recipients must meet work requirements and face a 60-month lifetime cap on benefits. Child-only cases, however, are exempt from both rules.<\/p>\n

The report highlighted what it called a striking disparity: needy American families must comply with TANF’s core work and time-limit provisions, while households headed by immigration-status-ineligible parents can receive child-only cash assistance indefinitely without work obligations.<\/p>\n

California Accounts for Over 80 Percent of National Spending<\/h2>\n

California’s dominance in the national figures was overwhelming. The Golden State accounted for nearly 70 percent of all households receiving immigration-related child-only assistance and approximately 81 percent of total spending, with taxpayers funding roughly $617.5 million.<\/p>\n

That spending represented about 16 percent of California’s overall TANF basic-assistance expenditures, according to New York Post<\/em>. Monthly benefits in the state climbed to $875 during the fiscal year.<\/p>\n

The report stated that no other state approached California’s combination of scale, concentration, and fiscal impact.<\/p>\n

The state with the next highest spending on immigration-related child-only cases was New York, which spent just $47.5 million on approximately 7,600 households\u2014a fraction of California’s outlays.<\/p>\n

Federal Call for Increased Scrutiny<\/h2>\n

The HHS report called for heightened scrutiny of child-only welfare cases and their impact on federal and state budgets.<\/p>\n

CalWORKS<\/strong>, the state program that distributes TANF benefits in California, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

With information from New York Post<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

California paid over $617 million in welfare benefits to households headed by illegal immigrant parents in 2024, accounting for roughly 81 percent of such spending nationwide, according to a new federal report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":5752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[651,6128,3177,543,6127,209,6126],"nfg_topic":[135],"class_list":["post-5753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-california","tag-child-only-cases","tag-hhs","tag-illegal-immigration","tag-tanf-benefits","tag-united-states","tag-welfare-payments","nfg_topic-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5858,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5753\/revisions\/5858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5753"},{"taxonomy":"nfg_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/nfg_topic?post=5753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}