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| Food Stamps, a children's life saver |
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Isabel M. Estrada Portales
06/17/2005
While there has been an increase in the number of hungry families
in US, a recent proposal on the House of Representatives, overwhelming
defeated, attempted to cut immigrant access to food stamps, a program
that is a life saver alternative to, among many other, the 22.5 percent
of Hispanics in poverty.
The amendment to the “Agriculture Appropriations Act of FY 2006”
introduced by Rep. Scott Garrett, Republican from New Jersey, was
rejected by a vote of 169-258.
“We applaud the many members of Congress, including Hispanic
leaders Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-TX) and Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL),
who stood in strong bipartisan opposition to this proposal,”
said Janet Murguia, President and CEO of the National Council of La
Raza (NCLR).
In 2003, 11.2 percent of families in the United States experienced
hunger, compared with 10.1 percent in 1999, according to most recent
official figures, released on National Hunger Awareness Day, held
this year on Tuesday, June 7.
Hunger is defined as the uneasy or painful sensation caused by lack
of food. Hunger and poverty are directly correlated. The immigrant
community and minority populations have the largest share of the 12.5
percent of the population that lives below the federal threshold for
poverty, in all, 35.9 million people, including 12.9 million children,
in 2003.
The poverty rates for children, African Americans, Hispanics, and
single moms were much higher than the national average. Among children,
the poverty rate was 17.6 percent. African Americans had a 24.4 percent
poverty rate. For, Hispanics, it was 22.5 percent. About 28 percent
of female-headed families were poor.
“Issues of hunger and food insecurity in communities throughout
the country don’t need to be muddied by extraneous anti-immigrant
bills. We need to ensure that our nation’s hungry are receiving
the food assistance that will enable them to go to school, go to work,
and fully contribute in the U.S,” commented Murguia.
Some pediatricians worry that cuts in welfare aid proposed in President
George W. Bush's 2006 budget will only exacerbate the situation. By
contrast Bush plans to keep tax cuts for more affluent sectors of
the population, they note.
Dr. Deborah Frank, a professor of pediatrics at Boston University's
School of Medicine, who also runs a specialised clinic for malnourished
babies, has similar concerns.
"We are seeing more and more very young babies under a year of
age which is a particular concern because they are most likely to
die of under nutrition, and also their brains are growing very very
rapidly," said Frank, in a telephone interview with AFP.
"A baby's brain increases 2.5 times in size in the first year
of life," she said, adding that if the baby fails to get the
nutritional building blocks he or she needs for the brain to develop,
lifelong difficulties in behaviour and learning can result.
But infant-child protection centers do not exist in the United States,
unlike it other countries, such as France, making children below the
age of three or four years old somewhat invisible to authorities,
lamented Frank.
"They don't come to my clinic until they are already quite underweight,"
she said. "Recently I have been alarmed because we are getting
more children who are so ill that they go to hospital rather than
they come to the clinic first," a situation which, in 20 years
of practising medicine, Frank had earlier seen reversed.
Here in the District of Columbia, the poverty rate for children is
35.2 percent compared with 17.6 percent nationally, the highest in
the nation. This translates to 100,000 children at risk of hunger
in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area – 35,000 in the District
alone or 1 in 3 children. In Montgomery and Prince George’s
Counties, 1 in 4 children is at risk of hunger and in Northern Virginia,
1 in 5.
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