February 25, 2026 To: Representative Keathley and Members of the House General Laws Committee From: Christine Woody, Food Security Policy Manager at Empower Missouri Re: HB 2481 and HB 2468 | |||
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Christine Woody and I am with Empower Missouri. Empower Missouri is the state’s largest anti-poverty advocacy organization.
I am here to respectfully urge you to oppose both of these bills and any other efforts to expand citizenship documentation requirements or impose stricter verification tests as a condition for accessing public benefits in Missouri.
While this bill is framed as preventing benefits from going to undocumented individuals, the reality is that undocumented immigrants are already ineligible for programs like SNAP and Medicaid under federal law.
Missouri is already required to verify immigration status. Applicants must provide their SSN or their qualifying Alien Registration Number ( otherwise known as A number) when they apply. The State also runs all applicants through electronic federal databases such as the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the SAVE system- to prove they are citizens of this country.
This bill says that is not enough and requires documentary submissions by every applicant to prove their citizenship not only at the time of initial application but at every re-certification point and for SNAP that is every 6 months for most households.
Increasing documentation requirements does not close a loophole—it just creates new barriers for people who are already eligible.
What will happen if a bill such as these passes: eligible low income Missouri citizens will lose access to food. And the cost of implementing these stricter verifications will cost the state millions of dollars! Taxpayer dollars are better spent ensuring eligible families receive nutrition support rather than creating larger government, more red tape and increased bureaucratic hurdles.
Undocumented people are not receiving benefits, and the qualified legal immigrants, refugees and assylees who are eligible all have their qualifying documentation paper work because they are required to submit it and present it all the time, who this added documentation requirements are going to hurt are U.S. citizens—particularly the most vulnerable in our state.
- Seniors, some of whom were born at home without formal official birth certificates.
- Low-income individuals who move a lot and who cannot easily find their documents or obtain replacement documents
- Survivors of domestic violence who have lost paperwork when they leave their abusers.
- Individuals who are struggling with homelessness, many of whom are veterans, who have no place to keep these documents and do not have them.
These individuals are legally entitled to SNAP and desperately need the support SNAP provides yet these additional paperwork requirements could delay or deny them access to food assistance.
In addition, this increased documentation requirements adds so much additional paperwork, increased need for new technology to secure applicant documents once they are submitted, and increased caseworker time. This all will cost the state more money.
Adding new layers of unnecessary verification will increase administrative costs, slow down approvals, and increase Missouri’s error rate, which is even more important now because of the passage of HR1- the One Big Beautiful Bill Act this past summer– which shifts the cost of SNAP benefits onto states based on a state’s error rate. Missouri is working hard to get its error rate down but adding unnecessary and un required additional documentation and verification only increases the risks of DSS employees of making errors and thus could cost the state over 100 millions dollars in increased SNAP costs every year.
If our shared goal is program integrity, we should focus on evidence-based oversight—not policies that make it harder for Americans to feed their families.
For these reasons, I respectfully urge you to oppose this bill.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Spanish 
English