Immigrant Victims of Abuse Are Illegally Denied Benefits, Suit Says

Hundreds of battered immigrant women and children are being illegally denied food stamps and other aid because of programming errors in New York welfare computers and faulty staff training, according to legal papers that poverty lawyers plan to file in federal court today.

The lawsuit is a last resort, the lawyers said, because city and state officials have failed to fix systemic problems that force many women to choose between staying safe and feeding their families, despite government policies aimed at supporting them until they can get on their feet.

At its most basic level, the problem lies in the pull-down computer menu that caseworkers use when they enter information about a noncitizen applying for aid. The list of eligible immigration categories mistakenly omits "battered qualified alien," the category in which these women and children fit. So workers systematically reject them, with faulty state training manuals compounding the problem, the lawyers said.

"We have clients who have chosen to return to the abuser rather than not have food for their children," said Elizabeth S. Saylor, a lawyer with the Domestic Violence Project of the Legal Aid Society, one of the groups bringing the lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan as a class action. "People try to escape, but what's worse for the children, to see their mom get abused, or to be in the shelter and go hungry?"



http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/nyregion/13immig.html