Obama Administration Urged Self-Reliant Hispanics To Go On Food Stamps

The government encouraged self-sufficient Hispanics to apply for food stamps, in a Spanish-language radio campaign that continued until English speakers finally became aware of it, triggering a furor on talk radio. As Mickey Kaus notes, the Obama administration ran an ad campaign consisting of:

radio “novelas” that urged Spanish-speakers to wise up and get on the dole. (“In one of these, an individual tries to convince a friend to enroll in food stamps even though that friend declares: ‘I don’t need anyone’s help. My husband earns enough to take care of us,” says GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions, describing the novelas. “The first individual replies back: ‘When are you going to learn?’”)

This is just one of many ways that Obama has encouraged people to rely on government handouts. Last Thursday, the Obama administration gutted welfare reform, by issuing a directive that illegally authorizes waivers of the work requirement contained in the bipartisan 1996 welfare reform law. Such waivers are illegal, as the Heritage Foundation notes, since the work requirement is a provision of the law that was specifically designed not to be waived, unlike certain other, less central provisions of the 1996 law. That law was passed partly in response to government officials’ attempt “to define activities such as hula dancing, attending Weight Watchers, and bed rest as ‘work’” and thus avoid requiring work by welfare recipients.

The Obama administration has promoted dependency on the government, rather than productivity and economic advancement, among immigrants. On the one hand, it has illegally paid out billions of dollars in tax credits to undocumented immigrants for relatives back in Mexico, promoting rampant tax fraud.

On the other hand, as David Bier noted, it has made it much harder for immigrants to work legally in this country:

Almost immediately upon their arrival in Washington, Obama administration officials made hiring legal migrant workers more difficult. In May 2009, the U.S. Department of Labor finalized a rule that reversed changes to the H-2A agricultural visa program by the Bush administration which had made employing temporary workers easier. Other new rules essentially guarantee that few farmers will ever be able to hire legal immigrants.