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IMPORTANT NOTICE
FOR IMMIGRANTS

New INS guidelines permit immigrants and their children to use certain non-cash benefits and special purpose cash benefits without affecting their immigration status including:

  • Medi-Cal
    (Unless you use these services to pay for long-term care i.e., long-term nursing home care)
  • Food Stamps
  • Healthy Families
  • Emergency Medical Assistance
  • WIC (Women, Infants and Children)
  • Job Training Programs
  • Foster Care and Adoption Assistance
  • Non-Cash benefits funded under CalWORKs
  • Emergency Disaster Relief
  • Testing & Treatment of Communicable Diseases
  • One time emergency payments
    under CalWORKs
  • Prenatal Care
  • County Health Programs
  • Immunizations
  • Nutrition Programs
  • Housing Assistance
  • Energy Assistance
  • Educational Assistance
  • Child Care Services
  • Transportation Vouchers
Some of the above programs may provide cash benefits. The purpose of such benefits is not for income maintenance but rather to avoid the need for on-going cash assistance for income maintenance; therefore, they are not subject to public charge consideration.

 

Use of these benefits will not be considered a Public Charge by INS:

INS will not deny your legal admission to the U.S.
INS will not deny your application for legal permanent residency.
INS will not ask you to repay public benefits you received.

 
For More Information Call:
Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) 1-888-624-4752 (Spanish and Russian)
Neighborhood Legal Services HEALTH CONSUMER CENTER 1-800-896-3203 (Spanish, Armenian, Cambodian, Arabic and French)
Chinatown Service Center 1-213-808-1700 (Cantonese and Mandarin)
South Asian Network 1-562-403-0488 (South Asian Languages)
Thai Community Development Center 1-323-468-2555
WRAP Agency 1-310-337-1550 (Cambodian, Japanese, Laotian, Tagalog, Vietnamese)
Korean Resource Center 1-323-937-3718
 

Los Angeles County DPSS Public Charge Language Lines
Language
 Phone Numbers
Armenian 800-453-6968
Cambodian 800-632-9690
Chinese 800-557-3731
English 800-815-5005
Farsi 800-807-3938
Korean 800-557-5351
Russian 800-808-4044
Spanish 800-576-1519
Tagalog 800-810-8985
Vietnamese 800-578-6762

Updated February 27, 2002