Bill provides food for people regardless of immigration status
Immigrant farmworkers are allowed to harvest and process food in Oregon. However, they’re frequently not allowed to eat it.
Oregon Senate Bill 611 would provide federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits to people younger than 26 and older than 55 — regardless of their immigration status.
State Sen. Wlnsvy Campos, D-Beaverton, drafted the legislation and told members of the Senate Committee on Human Services March 25 it shouldn’t attract controversy.
“This is a common-sense solution rooted in equity,” Campos said. “It aligns our food security goals with our state’s values of inclusion and fairness. It ensures that we don’t ask essential workers to feed Oregon while being denied the ability to feed their own families.”
Immigrants? Equity? Inclusion? Cue the controversy.
“Why are we trying to reward these invaders to live on our dime?” Maurice Yoder of Sheridan, former chair of the Yamhill County Republican Party, wrote to the committee. “They are here illegally and do not deserve our support, these criminals.”
Jason Prophet of Springfield told the committee he rejects socialism.
Forced by a disability to retire at 52, he wrote that he pays federal retirement taxes but brings in too much income in return to receive SNAP benefits. Therefore, he concluded, immigrant children and their elders shouldn’t receive SNAP benefits either.
Campos suggested such comments missed the point.
“Food is not a privilege,” Campos said. “It is a basic human right. It is the foundation of health, dignity and opportunity.”
Some 130 people joined Prophet and Yoder in sending angry letters to the committee to argue otherwise, but none of the bill’s opponents attended the public hearing in person. Instead, the hearing room was packed to capacity with supporters. The opponents’ 130 letters were outnumbered by 375 letters of support.
The bill creates Food for All Oregonians, a program within the Department of Human Services. It also creates an advisory board that includes immigrants and refugees.
Campos is the chief sponsor of the bill along with state Rep. Ricki Ruiz, D-Gresham.
“As the son and grandson of immigrants, I understand firsthand the struggles families face when they’re excluded from essential services,” Ruiz testified. “No one in Oregon should have to choose between paying rent or putting food on the table.”
State Sen. Suzanne Weber, D-Tillamook, one of the bill’s 22 co-sponsors, said the “illegals” and “criminals” critics refer to are vulnerable people at either end of the age spectrum.
Many of them are children.
“Hunger affects more than just those who are hungry — as bad as that is,” the retired elementary school teacher said.
“Hungry children and seniors are less healthy,” she said. “Hungry children end up absent more often and put more pressure on our education system. The hunger seniors experience exacerbates other health issues, putting pressure on Medicaid and other health programs.”
Rather than draining tax dollars, Weber said the bill promises to save money.
“Spending money to address hunger now will save us money on these issues later,” she said. “We have an opportunity to take a step forward in addressing an issue that touches so many other issues.”
Weber said the bill enjoys bipartisan support in both the House and Senate and among both rural and urban lawmakers. However, of the bill’s 22 sponsors, state Rep. Mark Owens of Crane is the only Republican.
The committee’s Co-Chair Diane Linthicum, R-Klamath Falls, asked why the bill is needed when students already receive free lunch and breakfast at school.
Weber said her students frequently came to school hungry, despite free meals.
“They probably hadn’t eaten since lunchtime the day before,” she said.
Timothy Herrera, an anthropology professor at the University of Oregon, told the committee that school meals are not enough.
“What about when a child goes home during holidays, during the summer, when they stay home when they’re sick, when a child has specific dietary needs due to chronic illnesses, when they graduate but are unable to work and don’t have enough experience on their resumes?” he said.
Hunger should not be seen as an abstract issue, Campos said.
“It is the stress a parent feels when their pantry is empty, and payday is still days away,” she said. “It is the student who can’t concentrate in school because they didn’t have breakfast. It is a senior who must choose between paying for medication or putting food on the table.”
More than 62,000 Oregonians are excluded from federal food assistance programs solely because of their immigration status, she added.
“This isn’t just a gap in services,” she said. “It is a deep systemic shortcoming that leaves tens of thousands of families vulnerable to food insecurity despite their vital contributions to our state.”
Immigrants contribute $5.6 billion annually to taxes in Oregon, testified Andrea Willliams, the president of the Oregon Food Bank.
That number comes from a report by the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit advocacy group. The report also concluded that immigrants without documentation contributed nearly $700 million of that amount.
The study was based on 2023 Census data. It also concluded that immigrants:
Earned roughly $20 billion in household income in 2023 and paid nearly $14,000 per person in annual taxes.
Made up more than 30% of the agricultural workforce in Oregon as well as 21% of manufacturing workers and nearly 20% of those working in transportation and warehousing.
Contributed nearly $2 billion to Social Security and more than $500 million to Medicare (even though many of them cannot receive these benefits because of their immigration status).
Williams pointed out that Oregon is the only state on the West Coast that does not extend SNAP benefits to immigrants.
“Fifty years of research consistently shows that for kids and seniors, being on SNAP leads to better outcomes in homeless prevention, education and early learning, job retention and health,” she said.
Specifically, Williams added, SNAP benefits:
- Improve high school graduation by 18%.
- Reduce seniors’ risk of being hospitalized by 46%.
- Generate $1 to $2 in local economic activity for every SNAP dollar spent.
The Oregon Food Bank and similar local organizations cannot meet the demand for food, Williams told the committee.
“Honestly, SNAP would help Oregon Food Bank and the food banks we support because the need is so high,” she said. “We don’t have enough food to distribute for the amount of need.”
Neil Moffett of Scio smelled something foul with talk of food distribution.
“Everyone who supports this bill is disgusting,” he wrote. “None of you care at all about the people involved. You are all just lining your pockets with the money you get from major food corporations who see illegal immigrants on food aid as a profit center.”
His written testimony didn’t explain how the bill lines anyone’s pockets.
The bill would not funnel money to any nonprofit organizations or government agencies. It wouldn’t enrich Rogue Food Unites, for example, a small Ashland nonprofit that offers a farmers market with fresh produce — reaching some 2,000 people.
“We wish we could pack a big bag of produce for everyone who needs it, but we know we can’t reach our community’s hunger needs alone,” Yesenia Solorzano-Madden, the group’s outreach coordinator, testified.
“Making sure our patrons are connected with other resources like SNAP is critical to making sure they always have access to nutritious food,” Solorzano-Madden said. “It ensures that when someone shows up at the end of our market after a long day’s work, we know that the small amount of food we’re able to give them is not the only food they can get that week.”
Maria Delgado is a migrant worker and a single mother of two who has lived in Oregon for the past 18 years.
“My community is fearful,” she told lawmakers. “Because of all of this oppression, I’ve heard from some of them that they want to deport themselves. I don’t think it’s fair for having been here for so many years struggling and working every day that they have to take the option of removing themselves.”
Darwaish Zakhil, the director of community advancement for the Afghan Support Network in Beaverton, recalled a father who came to him after being unable to buy groceries.
The man felt humiliated and embarrassed, Zakhil told the committee.
“This is unfair,” he said. “The billionaires are spending billions of dollars sending people to Mars, and in the state of Oregon in 2025, we are excluding the youth and seniors.”
If the bill isn’t bipartisan, Zakhil said, it should be.
“It doesn’t matter who you are,” he said. “Put yourself in the shoes of that dad who was crying out that day. We are all dads. We all have parents. Put yourself in their shoes. See through their lenses.”
Cynthia Ramirez, a policy associate with the Woodburn-based farmworkers union PCUN, told lawmakers the bill boils down to a core issue.
“This bill is a response to a fundamental injustice,” she said. “Farmworkers deserve to have the same access to food as the people they feed.”•
Senate Bill 611 creates the Food for All Oregonians program in the Oregon Department of Human Services to provide food to people who would qualify for federal food assistance if not for their immigration status. The Democrat-led bill is in the Senate Committee on Human Services. A public hearing was held March 25. A work session was scheduled for Tuesday, April 8.
Senate Bill 1119 bars employers from calling ICE on their workers or even threatening to do so.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials boast on their website that their armed agents have rounded up 33,000 immigrants since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January.
Oregon employers with immigrant workers could also be considered armed. Their weapon? The threat that they can call ICE.
“For us, this is not a hypothetical,” Mike Powers told the Senate Committee on Labor and Business April 1. “We have seen cases where workers face bullying through ICE threats.”
Powers, the president of Oregon’s Service Employees International Union, was testifying in support of Senate Bill 1119. The bill prohibits employers from calling ICE on their workers or threatening to do so. It also requires employers to alert workers to any impending visits by ICE agents.
Jenny Dresler, the Oregon Farm Bureau’s director of regulatory affairs, told committee members the bill is redundant.
“It’s already illegal to use immigration status to retaliate against undocumented workers who make discrimination claims or wage and hour claims or safety complaints,” Dresler said. “National origin is already a protected class in Oregon, and there are already significant federal laws that provide that protection.”
Besides, she added, an employer would be a fool to call ICE.
“Threatening to call ICE or another immigration authority would really create a chilling effect on our workers,” Dresler said.
Paloma Sparks, the executive vice president and general counsel for Oregon Business & Industry, said no one wants ICE agents nosing about — especially employers.
“To actually report them to ICE means that ICE is coming to your workplace,” Sparks said. “And if you have knowingly hired somebody or have reason to believe you have hired somebody with uncertain immigration status, you’re in much bigger trouble and are opening up all of your documents for investigation.”
Existing state law already requires employers to warn workers of an impending federal investigation, she added.
Cynthia Branger Munoz, a public affairs consultant for the Oregon Education Association, told lawmakers the bill provides important clarity for mixed-status families and young DACA recipients.
“Immigration status and national origin are not the same,” Munoz said. “They’re very different.”
Employers who don’t call ICE have nothing to fear from the bill, she said.
“This legislation doesn’t impose new obligations on employers who already operate in good faith,” she added. “Employers who do not engage in immigration-related threats or coercion will see no disruption.”
Oregon’s immigrant workers live in extraordinary times, testified Ira Cuello-Martinez, policy advocacy director for the Woodburn-based farmworkers union PCUN.
“As a result of the federal administration’s aggressive rhetoric on immigration, immigrant workers are at higher risk of facing intimidation, threats of deportation or unjust termination,” Cuello-Martinez told the committee.
“Our members have expressed ongoing concerns about immigration and the threat of mass deportations,” he said.
The shadow of President Trump looms heavy over the legislation, said Powers, the union president.
“Recent federal policies have exacerbated fears, emboldening bad actors,” Powers said. “This bill sends a message that we’re going to protect all of our workers — whether a family arrived in 1824 or 2024.”
Kate Suisman, an attorney who handles civil rights cases for the Northwest Workers Justice Project, told lawmakers the bill sidesteps debates about immigration policy.
“We can all disagree about immigration,” she said. “Economists could talk about why we have the situation we have. But I think one thing we can agree on is rights are rights. You shouldn’t be able to treat people differently because you think they’re undocumented.”
Sen. Kathleen Taylor, D-Milwaukie, and Sen. James Manning, D-Eugene, introduced Senate Bill 1119. The bill is in the Senate Committee on Labor and Business. An additional public hearing was scheduled to be held Tuesday, April 8. Committee members were scheduled to take action on the bill during the same meeting.
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This article appears in April 9, 2025.