Illegals escape subsidy scrutiny

Arlington and Montgomery counties are the only local jurisdictions that do not check the immigration status of applicants for local housing subsidies, allowing illegal aliens to receive taxpayer-funded rent assistance.

Montgomery County spends about $3.7 million a year on rent assistance for 1,600 households, and Arlington County spends about $2.4 million a year on housing grants for 680 households.

Neither county verifies the immigration status of the head of household or of household members who get help in paying rent. Officials in the District and Fairfax, Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties said they check the immigration status of applicants for local housing-assistance programs. Montgomery County, however, relies on applicants to voluntarily disclose whether they are legal residents.

“If you say that you are a citizen, then we don’t check,” said Nancy Fink, who manages the rental-assistance program for the county’s Department of Health and Human Services.

“If anything ever came to light, we will then go to them and ask them to provide [documentation],” she said. “We do everything possible to make sure that everything is on the up and up.”

Arlington County does not screen applicants to see if they are in the country legally, said Susanne Eisner, deputy director of the county’s Department of Human Services.

Of the estimated 7 million illegal aliens in the United States in 2000, about 103,000 lived in Virginia and 56,000 in Maryland, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

Immigration researchers estimate that the number of illegal aliens has surged to about 10 million today and that 34,000 of them receive rent assistance as heads of households.

Miss Fink said her agency does not run applicants’ names through the USCIS’ alien-status verification database, an eligibility test required for recipients in the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Housing Choice Voucher Program — a rent subsidy formerly known as the Section 8 program.

Since 1995, local governments that administer the federal program have been required to check immigration status, and the system is available to check applicants for local programs.

But agencies that use state or county funds to pay housing subsidies make their own rules, and jurisdictions like Montgomery and Arlington counties opt not to use the database.

“The county certainly has an obligation to do certain things in the area of affordable housing, but I don’t think the county is responsible for providing housing to people who are here illegally,” said Wayne Kubicki, a Republican appointee to the Arlington County Fiscal Affairs Advisory Commission, which reviews budgets and other fiscal matters for the Arlington County Board.

Mr. Kubicki said the county’s Housing Grants Programs is expected to spend more than $3 million this year, about $900,000 over budget. Scores of needy residents have been placed on a waiting list for one of the program’s 680 slots, he said.

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