THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 24, 1996 TAG: 9609240277
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: 77 lines
RICHMOND - Virginia will begin turning down noncitizen legal immigrants who apply for food stamps as part of the new federal welfare reform law, officials said.
Officials will review the cases of immigrants already receiving food stamps as their benefits expire, and if they are no longer eligible under the new criteria, they also will lose their food stamps.
The welfare reform measure, signed into law a month ago, calls for barring legal immigrants from receiving food stamps until they become citizens, unless they fall into certain exempt categories.
Those include refugees in their first five years in the country, veterans, and legal residents who have worked 10 years without receiving any federal means-tested benefits.
Keith Chadwell, director of the state Department of Social Services region that includes Hampton Roads, said the new policies won't have a widespread impact in the area.
``In Hampton Roads, I would say it would be a very small amount of people who would notice,'' said Chadwell, responsible for more than 135,000 food stamp recipients in a region that includes South Hampton Roads, the Eastern Shore and stretches west to Brunswick County. ``We're talking hundreds.''
But Chadwell said Southeastern Virginia does contain one of the state's main concentrations of immigrants who will be effected - on the Eastern Shore.
``The population of migrant immigrants is the largest that this policy will impact,'' said Chadwell said, who did not have numbers of immigrant recipients available Monday afternoon. ``If you're an immigrant and not a recipient right now, we are not even allowed to give you the opportunity to apply.''
NORTHERN VIRGINIA Threat worries teachers
FAIRFAX - The return of a 17-year-old student who made a death threat against an Oakton High School teacher last spring has other teachers concerned. Some say they might ask for another assignment.
``Anyone who reads the paper knows these threats are very real,'' said Jim Elder, an Oakton biology teacher. ``No one wants to transfer because it's a great school with great students.''
The threatened teacher, Steve Scholla, said he is negotiating to stay at Oakton if officials agree to expel students who threaten faculty members or require the students to transfer permanently.
Scholla, whose brother-in-law was shot and killed two years ago by an angry colleague, said he intervened after seeing a student ``kicking lockers, throwing books and acting in an abusive way to another teacher.''
Two weeks later, another teacher reported the student to an on-campus police officer after overhearing him say of Scholla, ``He's a dead man.''
The student was suspended 10 days and required to finish his junior year at Woodson. He also offered written and oral apologies for the hallway incident, which Scholla said he rejected. Remains to be analyzed
STAFFORD - A forensic anthropologist from the Smithsonian Institution will analyze the remains of Ava DeHart as investigators try to solve a mystery that has surrounded her death for 14 years, according to her sister.
Ava DeHart, 26, disappeared July 20, 1982, shortly after leaving her job at a motorcycle shop in south Stafford. She usually walked to her mother's house near the shop, authorities said.
Her remains were found Aug. 24 at the bottom of a 19-foot well in Orange County. No one was ever charged. Also... RICHMOND - Virginia's decision to lower the acceptable blood alcohol level to .08 percent coincided with drops in drunken driving arrests and alcohol-related fatalities, state police say. The arrests dropped from 35,318 in 1993 to 31,056 in 1995 and the fatalities dropped from 397 to 360. Coming up
TODAY - Lt. Jerry Hackney of the Newport News Fire Department, a member of the team that participated in the Oklahoma City bombing rescue, speaks at ceremony opening NASA Langley Research Center's charity fund-raising campaign in Hampton. MEMO: Compiled from staff and wire reports. by CNB