Adjusting to a new kind of life in the US is hard for any immigrant, and more so when the immigrant is an elderly person. Apart from the pain of being uprooted from his homeland and having to leave behind everything that he had worked for all his life, his friends and others close to his heart, an elderly immigrant has to live as a dependent in the US, since he cannot find a suitable job or received any retirement benefits from the government of this country.

The federal laws are not very kind to legal elderly immigrants, since access to such benefits like health coverage, cash assistance or Supplemental Security Income is not easy for these people. Only after they get official citizen status can such federal benefits be available to elderly immigrants. New welfare legislation was passed by Congress in 1996 that put a wall between most welfare benefits and legal immigrants in the country. The legislation was amended in 1998 and food stamps were again given to those children, handicapped and elderly immigrants who had entered the country prior to August 1996.

The good news is that elderly immigrants who are not eligible for Social Security or Medicare, can still apply for Medicaid, but often they are either ignorant of this fact or are too ashamed to ask for it. Financial problems apart, elderly immigrants also have trouble with the new culture, people and completely alien surroundings; while the younger lot can make friends easily, older immigrants have a tough time settling down on foreign soil.

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