![[OC] Welfare Usage for 75 Countries US State Dept Froze Visas](https://www.byteseu.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/q69lavzeaqdg1-1000x1024.jpg "[OC] Welfare Usage for 75 Countries US State Dept Froze Visas")
Charts from my blog, see link for full analysis: https://polimetrics.substack.com/p/double-checking-the-state-departments
Data from US Census ACS IPUMS microdata. Charts made in R and Datawrapper.
The US State Department recently paused all visa processing for 75 countries, with the justification being “unacceptable rates of welfare usage” by immigrants from those countries.
Well, I double checked the numbers, and I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about because usage their rates are comparable to native-born US citizens.
The highest rates of usage occur for immigrants from countries that have higher counts of refugees in the US, which makes sense.
The rest? Pretty similar to the US native-born population. So why are we pausing visas from these countries?
Posted by Public_Finance_Guy
7 Comments
To be beautiful (IMO) would also need an indication of parts of the total. Percentage is of course important, but it’s too easy to misunderstand, and removes any way of understanding total spending.
Richest country in world with 30% needing help while all the money goes to the top
Can’t believe that the USA still refers to 14 long-independent countries as “other USSR”. Been like 35 years. Time to update the categories.
The difference is Native US born users of the federal programs we have to (and should support).
The others not so much, we shouldn’t allow immigration unless they are statistically likely to increase economic per capita output and be a net benefit to our social systems.
Look at every other western countries sub (I’m a Canadian native) and they all say the same thing.
It has nothing to do with race – in fact I believe we should be doing way more to support our marginalized communities that we already have natively in the USA. Once they’re 100% then we can worry about others.
I mean from an economic perspective you have to provide welfare to your own citizens, but if you are trying to make resources go as far as possible you don’t want to import people who need welfare if you don’t have to.
I’m an immigrant in a different country and a condition of my visa was “no recourse to public funds”.
What are those abbreviations?
Thousands of Afghani immigrants are people we conscripted into very violent operations in their country for our means. They are people who fought for the US military, but get no citizenship, no education or training, often not even a drivers license. Like most things, it’s the US doing it to others, not the other way around