Racial differences in welfare rates disappear.
In "Census Shows Big Gain for Mexican-Americans" (news article, May 10), an immigration expert says welfare rates are higher among Hispanic immigrants.
Steven Camarota, research director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates more restrictive immigration policies, said poverty and welfare rates were higher among Hispanic immigrants.
"Everybody that used to run the city," Mr. Giuliani said to murmurs of approval, "and used to run the city with the high crime rates and the big welfare rates, and used to run the city when it was called ungovernable, all of those people support my opponent, right?
As the linen mills and the docks have closed over the years, unemployment has soared (in some lower-income Catholic areas, the rate of male unemployment is as high as eighty per cent), but welfare rates are generous-compared with those in the Republic of Ireland, at least.
And in July a public-spending review outlined a series of possible spending cuts, including a 5% reduction in welfare rates, to achieve budget balance by 2013.The government and the main opposition parties are united behind Lisbon but little else as they prepare for a possible snap election.
