Alex Nowrasteh and Jerome Famularo
House Representative Glenn Grothman (R‑WI) just reintroduced the Safeguarding Benefits for Americans Act to block non-citizens from receiving welfare benefits. Representative Randy Fine (R‑FL) also introduced a similar bill in late 2025 called the No Welfare for Non-Citizens Act. Rep. Grothman’s bill goes further by limiting non-citizen access to more entitlement and welfare programs, but Rep. Fine’s bill is still a big step in the right direction.
The timing of the introduction of both bills couldn’t have been better, as we just published our most recent estimates of immigrant and native-born American consumption of major means-tested welfare and entitlement programs.
Our headline finding is that immigrants consumed about 24 percent less in welfare benefits than native-born Americans on a per capita basis, which is unsurprising because even lower-skilled immigrants are positively selected and have limited legal access to welfare. This update is also similar to our findings in earlier years. In 2023, the most recent year for which data are available, immigrants made up about 14.8 percent of the US population but accounted for only 10.4 percent of total means-tested welfare and entitlement benefits. Non-citizen immigrants consumed 53 percent less than native-born Americans, while naturalized citizens consumed slightly more, largely because they are older and therefore more likely to receive Social Security and Medicare—the two titans of the American welfare state.
There is a persistent myth that the United States lacks an extensive welfare state, despite all the evidence to the contrary. One look at this brief will disabuse you of any such belief. Total spending on means-tested welfare and entitlement programs climbed to about $3.4 trillion in 2023. About $823 billion went to means-tested programs such as Medicaid, SNAP, SSI, TANF, and refundable tax credits, while approximately $2.3 trillion was spent on old-age entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Native-born Americans use an average of $7,134 in old age entitlements and $3,638 in means-tested benefits in 2023. By comparison, immigrants used $4,864 in old age entitlements and $3,370 in means-tested benefits. If native-born Americans had consumed the same per capita dollar amount of means-tested welfare and entitlement benefits as all immigrants, the total expenditures on these programs would have been about $715 billion less in 2023. That’s a tremendous savings, even for the federal government, considering it is approximately 42 percent of the federal budget deficit in 2023. We are tempted to suggest that native-born Americans should start assimilating toward immigrant levels of welfare and entitlement consumption.
Across nearly all major welfare and entitlement programs, immigrants consume less per capita than native-born Americans, but not uniformly so. They use much less Social Security and Medicare, but only slightly less Medicaid. Immigrants also use SNAP, SSI, and TANF at lower rates and lower dollar amounts per person, but those programs are relatively small compared to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Immigrants receive more per capita through the relatively small Earned Income Tax Credit and the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. For the latter, immigrants use $3 more per year on a per capita basis than native-born Americans. Immigrants are less likely than native-born Americans to use any welfare program and, when they do, use fewer of them for a shorter period. The typical lifetime abuser of welfare was born in this country.
We also broke out welfare consumption by race and ethnicity, as well as by nativity. Black native-born Americans have the highest welfare consumption, followed closely by white immigrants and white native-born Americans close behind. The relatively older ages among those groups, the native-born poverty rates, and their legal access to more welfare programs explain the discrepancy. Asian native-born Americans use the least welfare, black immigrants use the second least, and Asian immigrants use only slightly more, rounding out the groups with the least consumption.
The problem is the welfare state itself. Neither Rep. Grothman’s nor Rep. Fine’s bill would abolish the welfare state, but they would build higher walls around it by denying non-citizens access to different degrees. Rep. Grothman’s bill would save about $125 billion in the first year. We can only assume that some immigrants eligible for naturalization would decide to become citizens to obtain benefits in subsequent years, but their numbers would be small.
An annual savings of $125 billion is nothing to sneeze at, even if it is small compared to a hypothetical native-born American’s assimilation to lower immigrant welfare consumption norms. If enacted in 2023, the Safeguarding Benefits for Americans Act would have reduced the deficit by over 7 percent. The depth of America’s fiscal challenge is difficult to grasp due to the immense size of the debt, but reducing welfare spending helps.
The analysis in our brief relies on microdata from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), which tracks households over time and records monthly program participation and income. This allows us to measure annual benefit consumption more accurately than cross-sectional surveys. We also adjust for the well-known problem of welfare underreporting in surveys by scaling reported benefits to match administrative spending totals. As noted above, SIPP data released are delayed, so this brief analyzes 2023 welfare consumption.
Every result in the brief is calculated on a per capita basis, not per household, to avoid the most common sleight of hand in this literature: treating benefits received by native-born spouses and children in mixed-status families as though they were “immigrant welfare use.” The household is the unit of assistance for SNAP, TANF, WIC, and EITC. For that reason, we divide those household benefits equally across all household members.
Other commonly used datasets, such as the American Community Survey (ACS) and the Current Population Survey (CPS), contain some similar welfare participation information, but we did not use them here because they are less well-suited for estimating total annual consumption across programs.
Welfare fraud is a serious issue, but that doesn’t affect the findings here. First, SIPP surveys welfare consumption. Much of the fraud in Minnesota and elsewhere is by service providers. There is consumption fraud, but responses to the SIPP question should include that because the questions are about consumption, not whether the consumption was legal. Even if SIPP doesn’t include benefits that were fraudulently consumed, we adjust consumption amounts upward according to total budget outlays, which include all expenditures, including fraud. The presence of fraud may shift the distribution of benefits consumption, but it’s unclear how, since the share of citizens convicted of welfare fraud is rising.
Debates over immigration in the United States often hinge on claims that immigrants are heavy welfare users, but we show that isn’t true. If immigrants, who face eligibility restrictions and delayed access, consume less welfare than native-born Americans, the real concern lies with the size of the welfare state. Next to reducing the size of the welfare state overall, the most sensible reform is to build a wall around the welfare state that tightens eligibility, removes non-citizen access to benefits, and reduces access to public benefits. Doing so would protect taxpayers while preserving the large benefits of immigration.
