She's a bigot.

Programs get cut and instead of being mad at those who do the cutting, people are going to get mad at immigrants and minorities.

It's reverse logic...

1. Blame the 'other'
2. Find ways to blame 'other'

This is actually the point I was making to the co-worker I was originally talking too. How the ultra wealthy are using the media to divide us into groups so that we won't rise up against them while were fighting among ourselves.

"The ones doing the cutting aren't your friends, there are people with a wealth-makes-you-superior philosophy and they view you as inferior, so stop fighting the immigrants and the 'other' and join in the fight against them."

visits to new moms and babies..majority were undocumented. I cant believe how many times I had to educate ppl that these women are only getting medical coupons thru pregnancy and 2 mos after then THATS IT. They may have been issuted a small food stamp stipend for the pregnancy and they received WIC. Any state assistance..$ or food stamps were issued to the children up until the age of 16 or 18. We did have one woman who came to the states with Leprosy and thank goodness she qualified for emergency only med coupons for a long time. The pregnant and new moms would work in the fields until the dr said not to..many were picking fruit on ladders until their 9th month. Any state assist they got, they earned it.

Say "I know a social worker who..."

This anecdotal evidence is just as good as the bigot's.

The only way to debunk it is with actual data. Say you find stats on who receives assistance divided by race. But she's going to believe what she's going to believe no matter what the facts are.

You should have a supply of your own anecdotes. You won't win that person over but it may make give people who overhear the conversation pause.

living in the house and if any of those dependents have special needs - disability, etc..

Even an adult who isn't a legal dependent living in the house is still counted as a need factor.

It's easier to blame race/ethnicity than it is to look at all the facts.

to support her confirmation biases is futile.

She's either lying, or she had insufficient information to make a proper evaluation. What is most likely is she inferred all the facts to support her preconceived notion. There's really no point in arguing with someone who does that. They'll just continue to make up stuff to support their point. It's actually connected to the way many of them tend to "reason". They decide what should be, then make up the facts to support that conclusion.

I tend to just corner them and suggest that in fact I've caught them making up facts. When they object, then I suggest that a mistake was made, either on their part or the clerks and with a little work they could have cleared it up. Makes them very defensive, but they tend to stop telling the story after that out of fear of being caught again.

Race has never been an eligibility criteria. The Federal Register as well as state manuals governing these programs are all on the web these days. The person you were talking with probably pulled that notion out of their butt. There's no way to know why a family is eligible for a program without seeing their application for a benefit.

It sounds like the old stories I would hear from people when they learned that I worked in social welfare programs. Too many times I heard about experiences at the grocery store where they said they witnessed people buying all sorts of grocery goodies and paying for them with paper food stamps. The problem being that long before it supposedly happened the food stamp program switched to a credit card style payment format. Paper stamps torn out of a booklet like coupons had gone the way of the Dodo bird.

People lie. It's up to you if you want to go so far as telling them that. You work together and it's difficult. Even just saying that you simply don't believe them could make work life uncomfortable. But it's always good to know who around you is willing to lie about stuff.

Of assets, like ssvimgs?

She insisted they did. I reiterated that there must have been something in the application that was different besides race. I never believed her, but I think my other coworker did. It wasn't for her benefit that I wanted to rebut her, it was for his.. I was more concerned with making him see the truth.