President Bush enacted a law that extends benefits for elderly refugees.
The act signed Wednesday, extending supplementary security benefits for two years, was championed by a number for Jewish groups led by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and United Jewish Communities.
It affects close to 50,000 “humanitarian” immigrants who failed to achieve citizenship in the requisite seven years under existing law, according to HIAS. Some 40 percent of the refugees are from the former Soviet Union, and the majority of that group is believed to be Jewish.
Some of the immigrants have been hindered in the application process because of difficulties learning English late in life, and others have simply been stymied by the bureaucracy.
“Each year, thousands of Jewish individuals legally move to this country in search of their own vision of the American,” said William Daroff, the director of the Washington office for UJC, the federations’ umbrella. “It is outrageous that legal immigrants who have taken honest steps towards naturalization have been denied SSI benefits simply because the federal government has been unable to process their application in a timely fashion.”
HIAS thanked the president and the congressmen who pushed the legislation forward, including Sens. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) and Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) and U.S. Reps. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) and Jerry Weller (R-Ill.).
“This new law helps the most vulnerable individuals, formerly persecuted in their home country and invited to the U.S., to live their lives with dignity,” HIAS president Gideon Aronoff said in a statement.
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