B’klyn Food Stamps Funds trans-Atlantic Food Shipments
Food stamps are paying for trans-Atlantic takeout — with New Yorkers using taxpayer-funded benefits to ship food to relatives in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Welfare recipients are buying groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and packing them in giant barrels for the trip overseas, The Post found.
The practice is so common that hundreds of 45- to 55-gallon cardboard and plastic barrels line the walls of supermarkets in almost every Caribbean corner of the city.
The feds say the moveable feasts go against the intent of the $86 billion welfare program for impoverished Americans.
A spokeswoman for the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service said welfare benefits are reserved for households that buy and prepare food together. She said states should intervene if people are caught shipping nonperishables abroad.
Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, called it just another example of welfare abuse.
“I don’t want food-stamp police to see what people do with their rice and beans, but it’s wrong,” Tanner told The Post. “The purpose of this program is to help Americans who don’t have enough to eat. This is not intended as a form of foreign aid.”
The United States spent $522.7 million on foreign aid to the Caribbean last fiscal year, government data show.
Still, New Yorkers say they ship the food because staples available in the States are superior and less costly than what their families can get abroad.
“Everybody does it,” said a worker at an Associated Supermarket in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn. “They pay for it any way they can. A lot of people pay with EBT.”
Customers pay cash for the barrels, usually about $40, and typically ship them filled with $500 to $2,000 worth of rice, beans, pasta, canned milk and sausages.
Workers at the Pioneer Supermarket on Parkside Avenue and the Key Food on Flatbush Avenue confirmed the practice.
They said food-stamp recipients typically take home their barrels and fill them gradually over time with food bought with EBT cards.
When the tubs are full, the welfare users call a shipping company to pick them up and send them to the Caribbean for about $70. The shipments take about three weeks.
Last week, a woman stuffed dozens of boxes of macaroni and evaporated milk into a barrel headed for her family in Kingston, Jamaica. She said she didn’t have welfare benefits and bought the food herself.
“This is all worth more than $2,000,” she said. “I’ve been shopping since last December. You can help somebody else, someone who doesn’t live in this country.”
A man helping her pack the barrel said: “We’re poor here, and they’re poor. But what we can get here is like luxury to them.”
food stamps for the rich
here in crown heights people use their food stamps to pay for their things while they don’t report taxes and afford luxury vacations through out the world. so leave them alone…
Anonymous
Great. Thanks for letting the F.B.I. know.
Milhouse
The feds say the moveable feasts go against the intent of the $86 billion welfare program for impoverished Americans.
That is not the intent of the program. It’s no secret that the real intent of the program is to support farmers, so it doesn’t matter who buys the food, or why.
Andrea Schonberger
There’s much truth in what you wrote. I don’t know how the regulations apply where you live but in Washington state you can use your EBT card to buy pre-made pizzas, go to fast food places, and buy junk food at mini marts. I’ve never had an EBT card so I’m not sure but I think so long as the item is edible for human consumption it’s considered food, whether it’s good or bad nutrition wise. I’m not in favor of this loose translation but at the same time I don’t see how the government or anyone else can force people to buy real, good, wholesome food–basically ingredients to prepare good meals. While there are many reasons for this and perhaps even solutions, I would like to insist that the government crack down on misuse of food stamps and stop giving huge subsidies to farmers.
bbb.
it could be that its all for the farmers, thats an interesting angle to look at.
I have heard many times from the Island people that they’re doing this, it seems from what I heard around, that its done quite openly and alot of them do it. Its not right, but there are worse offenses that should be stopped too. These people are helping their loved ones, its sort of Robin Hood – ish, but again, there are people who are being out and out crooks for huge amounts of money, not like this.
I heard one Jamaican woman say that she ships food she gets from a food pantry, ships it over to Jamaica, and then goes there to visit her family and sells it. Again and again…..this is not making them hugely rich, like some of the big white collar crime people.
jew
crownheight.info you need to think b4 you print anything like 1. think think and think again .it will back fire one day.to the whole community.
Support the farmers
Aren’t locals from Crown Heights called “farmers” by certain elite out-of-town shluchim?
ashliach
No. 5 is right. Al tiftach peh L’Soton