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7/21/13, "NY food stamp recipients are shipping welfare-funded groceries to relatives in Jamaica, Dominican Republic and Haiti," NY Post, K. Briquelet, I. Vincent
"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....
The United States spent $522.7 million on foreign aid to the Caribbean last fiscal year, government data show....
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."...image above, "Pioneer Supermarket in Brooklyn sells plastic barrels that customers use to ship food to family members in the Caribbean," NY Post, J.C. Rice
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