A viral graphic circulating from a blog post by the Personal Finance Wizards claimed that nearly half of Afghan, Somali, and Iraqi “immigrants” in the U.S. are on food stamps. That sounds alarming — until you look at the real data.
According to the USDA’s official report for 2023, about 90% of SNAP recipients are U.S.-born citizens. Only about 10% are foreign-born — and that includes naturalized citizens, lawful residents, and refugees. Most undocumented immigrants aren’t even eligible for SNAP.
So how did the graphic get such high numbers? They didn’t use immigrant data. They used ACS ancestry data, which counts people who simply identify as Somali or Haitian — including second and third-generation American citizens — and then falsely labeled them as “immigrants.”
They also cherry-picked only darker-skinned groups and ignored European ancestries like Russian or Ukrainian, which also report SNAP use. The result? A misleading picture that weaponizes context-less statistics to push a xenophobic narrative.
The truth is simple: SNAP overwhelmingly serves American citizens, from every background. Using tiny ancestry groups to imply immigrants are draining the system isn’t data — it’s disinformation.
THE DATA: Snap recipients with the latest complete data from USDA (2023) shows us that the market share of SNAP recipients are White identifying people.
SNAP RECIPIENTS BY CITIZENSHIP: Using the same data from USDA, we see that 89.4% of recipients are U.S. born citizens… it is difficult for illegal immigrants to even attempt to collect social benefits and programs.
***IMPORTANT: AS OF NOW THERE IS NO WAY TO COLLECT EXACT NATIONALITY OF FOOD STAMP RECIPIENTS.***