Eligibility of Non-Citizens

Most TRIM input files do not contain enough information on a person’s citizenship status to allow TRIM to simulate citizenship-related eligibility rules. However, on some TRIM input files there is an imputed variable CorrectedCitizenship. This variable, when combined with result variables from the AlienPrep simulation, allows TRIM to simulate citizenship-related eligibility rules. Each TRIM simulation which implements these rules does so through a common set of program rules. This document describes how these rules work.

The variable CitizenshipStatus is used to classify persons into 4 citizenship categories: citizen, illegal alien, temporary alien, and legal alien (includes refugees). Persons classified as citizens have no restrictions on their eligibility. The eligibility status for illegal aliens and temporary aliens is handled very simply through the national-level rules IllegalAlienEligible and TempAlienEligible -- either all aliens in the corresponding category are eligible for the simulated welfare program, or they are all ineligible. Determining the eligibility of legal aliens is more complicated.

Initially, the program rule LegalAlienEligible controls the eligibility of legal aliens group. Separate values are given for each state, and within each state for ‘post-reform’ aliens and ‘pre-reform’ aliens (i.e. aliens who were in the U.S. prior to the 1996 reforms can be treated differently from later aliens). Like the rules IllegalAlienEligible and TempAlienEligible, LegalAlienEligible gives the user the option of making all aliens in this group either eligible or ineligible for the simulated program. However, LegalAlienEligible also gives the option to apply ‘restricted’ eligibility rules. When this option is specified, a legal alien will only be eligible if they meet the requirements specified by any of the following rules:

• AlienEligWork40Q
• AlienVeteranElig
• AlienYearsBarred
• EligIfDisabled
• EligIfOverAge
• EligIfUnderAge
• IfRcvSSIPreReform
• RefugeeEligYears

Note that regardless of how LegalAlienEligible makes a legal alien eligible (i.e. restricted, unrestricted or not modeled), if the legal alien is not a refugee their eligibility can be taken away by the rule SponsorDeemingYears.

In order for the citizenship-related program rules to work properly, the simulation must have access to the result variables created by the AlienPrep simulation. The user specifies these variables through the following program rules (which are generally categorized as "Citizenship Variables" in the "Categorical Eligibility" category of rules):

• FortyQuartersExemption
• PreReformImmigrant
• PreReformSSIVar (created by a special run of SSI, not AlienPrep)
• SponsorDeemingExemptVar
• VeteransExemption
• YearEnteredUS
• YearsFor40Q
• YearsLivingInUS

Note that while a common set of program rules is used by TRIM to determine whether a non-citizen is eligible for the simulated program, the treatment of persons who are ineligible due to their citizenship status can vary from program to program. A program can completely ignore the presence of such a person when computing eligibility for others in the unit, it can deem income from them, or it can apply some other treatment. The description of the simulated program should indicate how persons ineligible due to their citizenship status are treated.

Note that when using a non-immigrant input file (i.e. one that does not have CorrectedCitizenship on it), all of the program rules in the "Citizen Variables" subcategory must be blanked-out (since AlienPrep results can't exist for such a file). In addition, most modules require that any citizenship targets and adjustment factors be set to zero when using a non-immigrant file. All other citizenship-related rules will be ignored by the module when using a non-immigrant file.