Over 60 percent of illegal immigrant-led households and 51 percent of legal immigrant households received some sort of welfare benefits in 2024, compared with just 37 percent of natural-born citizen households taking taxpayer benefits, according to a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies.
The study, released on Wednesday, paints a concerning picture of welfare use by both illegal immigrants and natural-born U.S. citizens.
“If we wish to avoid high use of welfare by the foreign-born in the future, then moving to a system that selects immigrants based on their education or skills makes it much more likely they will earn higher incomes and not need welfare. Since more than one-fifth of all immigrant households using at least one welfare program are headed by an illegal immigrant, enforcing immigration laws and reducing the size of the illegal immigrant population would also be helpful in lowering future immigrant welfare use,” said the Center for Immigration Studies.
Researchers found that 61 percent of households headed by illegal immigrants, 51 percent of those headed by legal immigrants—whether naturalized citizens or visa holders—and 37 percent of natural-born citizen households received some sort of welfare.
The Center for Immigration Studies explained that, even in states that do not explicitly provide welfare benefits to illegal immigrants, their households may receive such benefits if they have U.S.-born children.
Their results are based on an estimate that there were 13.8 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. as of mid-2024, using data from the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Food and Medicaid assistance were the most common forms of welfare across immigration statuses.
Households headed by naturalized citizens were more likely, at 48 percent, than those headed by natural-born citizens, at 37 percent, to receive some form of welfare benefits.
Nuclear-family-only households, defined as homes where all household members are either the spouse or partner of the head of household, or the child of the head, were slightly less likely to receive welfare benefits across immigration statuses.
Only 33 percent of nuclear family-only U.S.-born households and 48 percent of those headed by immigrants took welfare benefits.
While the study shows the concerning prevalence of welfare reliance among immigrants, it also paints a disturbing picture of the plight of natural-born citizen families.
A staggering 64 percent of natural-born citizen-headed households with children made use of some sort of welfare benefits in 2024. Fifty-two percent took food assistance, and 43 percent took Medicaid benefits.
The study also found that higher levels of educational attainment were linked to lower levels of welfare use.
