Federal and state spending on limited emergency Medicaid services for the population defined by CBO. Includes some lawfully present noncitizens and unauthorized immigrants; these groups cannot be separated in this table.
$35.672B
Selected period totalFederal + state · FY 2017–2024Nominal US dollars · this program only
Annual spending
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One program, not total migrant welfare spending or net fiscal impact. Tax payments and other benefits are outside this measure.
United States · nominal US dollars · reviewed 2026-09-17
Sources & methodology
Sum complete selected fiscal years for one funding scope. Retain FY 2017–2023 CBO Table 1 unchanged; append FY 2024 CMS national row 84 (B total, C federal, G state). The FY 2023 CMS bridge reconciles to CBO at published precision. Never add totals to their component shares.
Coverage, periods & limitations
Population
People otherwise eligible for Medicaid but ineligible for full coverage because of immigration status or the five-year waiting period.
Included
Emergency Medicaid spending in the CBO table, including qualifying emergency labor and delivery.
Excluded
Full-benefit Medicaid, state-only coverage expansions, other benefit programs, tax revenue and economic effects are outside this measure.
Comparability
Federal fiscal years end September 30. FY 2017–2023 retain CBO’s October 2024 vintage and million-dollar rounding; FY 2024 uses the preserved CMS workbook. Reports include adjustments. FY 2024 is substantially higher; it was verified against all state/territory sheets, not interpreted as population growth.
Limitations
CBO cannot split this spending by specific immigration status. This is one program, not total benefits for all immigrants or net fiscal impact. Annual changes can reflect policy, medical costs, use and reporting as well as population changes.
Precision
FY 2017–2023: nearest million USD; FY 2024: reported USD. No inflation adjustment or per-person rate is calculated.
Verified transcription of Table 1 via web PDF retrieval. Direct archival download returned HTTP 403; no local original PDF or original-file hash is claimed. Retrieved 2026-09-17.
Noncitizen recipients of federally administered Supplemental Security Income payments, including federally administered state supplements. Naturalized citizens are not in this category.
310,067Recipients · December 2025
$596.77Average monthly payment · December 2025 only
A December recipient count can include the same people in several years. No selected-period sum is calculated.
Annual December recipient counts
December
Noncitizen recipients
2015
525,595
2016
507,229
2017
492,642
2018
463,411
2019
430,352
2020
397,447
2021
365,714
2022
342,890
2023
324,723
2024
319,391
2025
310,067
Sources & methodology
December snapshots, not annual unique recipients. Do not sum across years. Average payment excludes prior-month back payments and cannot be multiplied into an exact annual cost. Noncitizen does not mean unauthorized.
SSA Supplemental Security Record, 100% data. Counts: Table 29. Average payment: Table 6. Retrieved 2026-09-17. Verified transcription from SSA web tables 29 and 6. Direct original download returned 403; no original-file hash is claimed.
Average-month estimates from the FY2023 SNAP Quality Control sample; 50 states, DC, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Source categories remain separate.
FY 2023 · estimates, rounded to the source’s nearest thousand
Source category
Average-month participants
Monthly allocated benefits
Naturalized citizen
2,470,000
$433,814,000
Refugee
434,000
$95,922,000
Other noncitizen
1,330,000
$242,032,000
Monthly allocated benefits are USDA estimates of each category’s portion of household benefits. They are not annual spending or a per-person payment.
Sources & methodology
Multiply published thousands by 1,000. USDA allocates household benefits to a category in proportion to eligible participants in that category. These are estimated monthly allocated benefits, not direct payments recorded against individual immigration status.
Sample of 43,776 households. Excludes erroneous issuance and disaster assistance, including COVID emergency allotments. Estimates are rounded; no confidence interval is provided in this table. Citizen children living with noncitizen adults are not added to noncitizen recipients. No annualization or multi-year total.
Table 3.6, printed page 30 / PDF page 46; sample and exclusions on printed page 17; proration footnote on page 29. Retrieved 2026-09-17.
August 31, 2022–December 31, 2024Audit-reported mission expenditure
Audit-reported expenditure for mission services during this fixed period; multiple government funding sources. The exact reported amount is $639,654,965.
This report has a fixed service period and does not change with the annual program filters above.
Sources & methodology
Not an annual series. The audit identified about $50,916 omitted from the public dashboard; the audit total is retained. No annual allocation is inferred, and this amount is not added to other programs.
Report page 8: mission expenditures; service period August 31, 2022–December 31, 2024; payment data through April 25, 2025. Published July 22, 2026; retrieved 2026-09-17.
FY 2017–2024 now available. FY 2024 increased substantially; the national workbook reconciles to its state and territory sheets. Reporting adjustments, service use and costs can affect changes. The source category does not isolate unauthorized immigrants.
Each program is shown separately. Federal, state and city records can overlap through reimbursements; adding them would risk counting the same expenditure twice.
Remaining data gaps
California healthcare: reconcile annual actual program expenditure and funding scope; do not use overall Medi-Cal budgets or policy savings.
TANF, housing, education and other support: attributable spending series by defined population not yet verified. Household benefit totals must not be assigned to noncitizens when they include citizen beneficiaries.
Newer NYC years: FY2026 remains provisional with conflicting source chart/table text; FY2027 is incomplete.
Newer Illinois years: FY2025 dashboard reports $553M of claims approved/MCO payments, while its FY2024 basis differs from audit service costs. Requires separate measure, not an extension of this audit series.
Annual SSI and SNAP dollar costs: SSI tables provide recipients and average December payments; SNAP table provides estimated average-month allocated benefits. Exact annual attributed outlays are not imported.
